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Ozone for Enhanced Combustion
Name: Leon
Status: other
Grade: other
Location: TX
Country: USA
Date: N/A
Question:
Does ultra violet light create ozone from air? If so,
would it be a good idea to set ultra violet light bulbs on the air
filter of a car and produce ozone to enrich combustion?
Replies:
Leon -
I just suspect this particular idea would not help things out.
Making ozone is rarely energy-efficient.
Supercharging, supercooling, adding nitrous
are all better ways to get mileage or horsepower.
Lamps usually make a tiny fraction of 1%, maybe 0.01%,
at which point the ozone smell would be quite strong
but the combustion would not be noticeably affected.
Making 1% would take a few cubic feet of lamps and gas-chamber,
and tens of kilowatts from the biggest alternator you've ever seen on a car.
Even then the most noticeable effect would be knocking,
because the highly reactive ozone
would probably ignite the gasoline fumes when the piston squeezes them,
somewhat before a normal car would know to fire the spark-plugs.
Then if one adjusted the timing to avoid this knock,
I suspect you would still have to settle for reduced compression,
like an engine modified for very-low-octane gas.
Jim Swenson
Hi Leon,
Yes, intense UV light does create some ozone (O3) from the oxygen
(O2) in the air. But there are a few things you need to know about
ozone. Using UV light is a very inefficient way to create ozone. At best,
it only results in less than 2 or 3% ozone concentration in air. Ozone is
very unstable and reverts to oxygen very quickly. Ozone is HIGHLY
corrosive. It corrodes some metals and very quickly destroys rubber
seals and many plastics. Ozone is extremely poisonous and even in
small concentrations, it attacks nasal and lung tissues. In short, ozone
can be dangerous stuff!
As you probably already know, a molecule of ozone contains 3 oxygen
atoms (O3) as compared to 2 atoms (O2) for normal oxygen. So, if it
were possible to supply a significant concentration of ozone to an
engine, and to recalibrate its fuel metering system to take advantage
of this (that is, to inject more fuel to burn with the increased oxygen
atoms that ozone contains), more power should result.
But the fact is that there is no practical method that can generate such
a high concentration of ozone, in the massive volume that an engine
uses. There are many ways to generate ozone, but the least efficient is
the use of UV light. Even the best available ozone generators that use
better methods such as corona discharge to create ozone, still only
manage to produce ozone concentration levels of 10% or less, and
these devices are far too complex to fit under the hood of a car!
I suggest to you that a far more practical way to increase the amount
of oxygen being fed to a motor, to increase its power output, is to
simply add a turbocharger or supercharger.
Regards,
Bob Wilson
Yes, ultraviolet light produces ozone. I will guess a little ozone would be
roughly equivalent to a little extra pure oxygen, and so would increase the
energy you could get from combustion, but I doubt you would get back as much energy
as you put in.
Tim Mooney
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Update: June 2012
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