Nitromethane according to wiki is a mono propelant

But all my reasearch shows this is not true
in very specialized 371 bar lab experments it ignites

in the real world it needs another fule like methonal to burn it

the pulse jet guys have tried most every fuel combo there is and they could not get pure nitro to keep burning

The fuel is not totaly knock sensitive as in if in a solid conatainer and dropped or stuck it might explode so a flex container like thin tin or plastic is better

the ignition temperature is high like 300 plus and the vapour is high double the other fuels nearly 60 degrees
it has a slow burn

it reguire two parts of air to burn totaly but can be made to burn without air in labs mostly

adding chemicals like alkilines or acids or similar will make it knock sensitive and adding fuels like 10% methonal will make it les knock sensitive

For drag racing one company will not give them pure nitro anymore so its cut down to 85% probably for safty reasons


If you burn nitro you make some nitric acid and this will make you lungs stop using oxegen and you can die so with drag racers they wear breathing gear

the nitro is not carsonagenic that I could find but its nasty in its pure form with acid like qualities

my reasearch shows that drag racers are the only real experts on this subject
and modelers sometimes know something
drag racers dont use 100% nitro but todays rules its 85% and before it was 95%

but drag racers have won with 10% nitro as 85% IS THE MAX

Using pure nitro is some 100 times more costly than normal gasoline fuel and some 20 to 25 times times more than using methonal
but you can get doble or mayby 2.5 times the HP

The drag racing group run the motor for 4 seconds use ~4 litres per second ~one galllon and some ~60 litres total with warming up

The ~85 kg ~200lbs weight ~ 500 cubic inch motor generates some 7000 BHP or ~90 hp to each kilo engine weight or 2lbs of motor and about the same BHP as a jumbo jet motor and after two seconds has melted the plugs and is deiseling the motor
The nitro fuel pulls heat away so the higher the nitro the coler the engine

The blower is using 800bhp at 40PSI to ram more air into the motor

The amount of fuel is two spoons of fuel to each cycinder per stroke roughly and the the fuel is so dificult to ignite they need two spark plugs with some 80 amps each to get fuel to ignite
the firing is way way in advance due to nitro being slow to burn

The fuel is mostly unburnt as nitro burn slowly gets ejected into the exhast plume breaks into hydrogen and ignites with atmoshere to make yellow flame and the rocket push down affect helps to keep the drag car nose on the ground until 300mph when tail plane makes 6 tons of down push on the tail

The weird bit is normally with a internal combustion motor you expect with turbulace to lose 40% of the power compared to using the fuel in a direct jet pulsar motor or rocket motor but it dosnt seem to be the case with the dragsters

not bad when you figure the average 500 cu inch motor makes like 200BHP

And with drag racing the power motor ratio 90:1 seems to better nasa rocket motors at typical 75 to 1 so the drag racers should be in charge of nasa


Any way the problem in the world is that nitro methane costs $30 a gal in the USA and double that elsewhere [:@]

which as far as I can see is stupid as it only made from natural gas best I can tell and should probably really cost at most the double the price of normal gasoline and natural gas fuel is more abundant and less controled by the arabs and ships easy in big special LPG ships

Which again is really stupid as with near pure nitro motors we could easly have really small 100 cc motors which make 200bhp that would drive cars with a motor weight of next to nothing like a few kg instead of 90kgs and knock 50% the weight of cars and get closer to 100 mpg easy peasy and the fuel is less difficult than petrol
and still cost similar to run the car as gasoline if the price for nitro was more like $4 to $6 a gallon
but at $30 a gallon the brain dead nitro making companies are keeping themselfs away from ruling the gasoline roost


and to cap it all the MIT have worked out that america can get all its electrical power from geo thermal power and so it dosnt need to omport arab oil at all

Man america must be really rich if they can waste everthing like that and still square the circle


Balsaeater