Just wondering!

A lot of money, a little sun, and little to no wind.[8D]

Quote from Wikipedia:

"Nitromethane is usually used with rich air/fuel mixtures because it provides power even in the absence of atmospheric oxygen. When rich air/fuel mixtures are used, hydrogen and carbon monoxide are two of the combustion products. These gases often ignite, sometimes spectacularly, as the normally very rich mixtures* of the still burning fuel exits the exhaust ports and out through the exhaust pipes. [* the very rich mixtures are necessary to reduce the temperature of combustion chamber hot parts so to control Pre-ignition and subsequent Detonation]"

Methanol (wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, and meths in the UK) is the first oxidation product of methane, CH4, and has the chemical name CH3OH. Further oxidation produces formaldehyde, then formic acid, and finally carbon dioxide and water (CO2 & H2O), which is ultimate--you cannot burn water! All of these godies occur in your engine and produce heat which does the work. Methanol is a colorless and almost oderless liquid which is a violent poison and is highly flameable. It burns with a pale blue flame which is not visible in daylight. You could be on fire with methanol and nobody could see the flames. Methanol produces 55,550 net BTU per gallon, a 3450 OF flame temperature in air, has a near 43 OF flash point (does not evaporate below 43 OF), and a 725 OF ignition temperature. The addition of castor oil and nitromethane will slightly lower the ignition temperature of the mix. 1300 OF to 1500 OF temperature is indicated by the "color" of a hot glow plug coil.

This is taken verbatim from Lorain County R/C Club web site, written by R.W. Stuart. May be found at http://www.lcrc.org/stu11.htm.

The exhaust is a small amount of unburned fuel, and the oil. Mostly oil, which is what you clean off your plane.[:'(]

Stuff that Al Gore doesn't like!

I ran a break-in tank through a Fox .15 powered CL plane indoors once when I was young and stupid. A few days later, I was wiping a thin layer of fine rust off of every gun in the gun rack with a rag and 3-In-One oil. My parents were not amused.
This leads me to believe that there is more than CO, CO2, formadehyde, hydrogen, and H2O in glow exhaust.

Nitro engine design relies on a fair percentage of the fuel that goes into the combustion chamber remain unburned. The function is to absorb heat and carry it out the exhaust.

The fuels are alcohol, oil, and nitro. So the exhausts contain some of each. Nitro and alcohol aren't good chemicals to spray all over whatever is in any room. And since the exhaust contains those, you don't want the exhaust all over everything.

The alcohol is usually methanol.
The nitro is usually nitromethane.
The oils can be almost base.

As in any internal combustion engine, there are a variety of chemical species present in the exhaust. Along with the variety of partial oxidation products from the methanol and nitromethane, there are also a variety of nitrogen oxides. Air is 80 percent nitrogen, and when you subject it to high pressures and temperatures, you get what are commonly referred to as NOx. NOx may combine with the water in the exhaust stream to form nitrous or nitric acids. Consequently, the exhaust from most internal combustion engines tends to be acidic and therefore somewhat corrosive. Thats why the exhaust pipe on your car looks the way it does after a few thousand miles. Put that acid in the air near your gun cabinets, and the results are what you'd expect.

Brad

Species? Living breathing? [X(] Just kidding, Brad .

Your point is well presented. Definitely not a place to run engines (around a gun cabinet or anything else you are concerned with oxidation).

Sorry, degree in biochemistry, background in nuclear engineering, and now working in safety and health. Tends to modify the vocabulary.

Brad

I understand.. just kidding with you. I fully understood what you are saying. I suppose with my background (electronics and electrical), I would use "circuit component.."

CGr.

Just wondering where dose all the fuel go? If I have a 8oz tank and I get .5oz of exhaust where does it go

8 oz goes in 8 oz comes out.

Law of conservation of mass states that for any chemical reactions the reactants mass will equal the mass of the product, So what ever the mass of the air / fuel that goes in the same comes out but it may be in a different form (ie it can go in or come out in any of the 4 stats , solid/liquid/gas/plasma but chemically it well be have identical number of atoms)

so what ever is in your fuel coming out your exhaust.

Steven

so if you put a bag over your exhaust you would actualy have 8oz.

Not really; you're putting in 8 oz of volume, not weight. You will have the same amount of mass by weight coming out the exhaust, not by volume. During the whole ignition/combustion process, there is some degree of phase change present, where the liquid you are putting in is coming out in a liquid/vapor/gas mixture, and as the temperature and pressure increase during the process, so does the volume. The volume of the liquid, vapor, and gases will increase at their own respective ratios. It's very difficult to measure gases by weight, but essentially that's where all the unseen product has gone (into the atmosphere).

No plasma here. That would need thousands of degrees in temperature or a supersonic mass flow rate through your engine [8D] And while I'm on the subject, there are many more than 4 states of matter, but we only experience 3 of them (liquid, solid, gas) on a regular basis on earth.

Yay science!

Ok that makes sense. Dang Public middle school science dosn't teach us this[:@]

Stick with it, it gets fun!

FatOrangeKat : how many states of matter are there [X(] i have only read about/been taught those 4 .

btw Around here we learn this in secondary 4 (grade 10) advanced science class...

Steven

Geez, this is kind of a tough question. Most people are familiar with the four basic states of matter that occur on earth: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma. Plasma is kind of a debated state: it is an ionized gas, so some people want to classify it as a gas. In similarity, there is supercritical fluid, which has the density of a liquid but the properties of a gas with respect to boiling points. People also talk about a gel, which is a plastic state of matter; this is like a solid but it completely takes the shape of its container like a liquid but its not a liquid. It's hard to talk about because if you use the terminology (like solid, liquid, etc) to describe something that is not actually one of these states, you are basically contradicting your description.

This all comes from the ability to compress, expand, heat, and cool things at levels never before thought possible, usually requiring insane amounts of energy. The Bose-Einstein condensate I think is when a gas is cooled to absolute 0 (-273 C, or about -459 F) and the sigma and pi bonds that were holding the atoms together turn into strings and make a kind of liquidy-substance. To get to temperatures this cold, you have to have a chain of pressure cooling chambers and various kinds of gases, and again, lots of energy. There are more forms of matter found in space, which have been replicated in labs; I don't really know much about these, only the solid, liquid, gas, plasma, supercriticals, etc.

Remind me in 2 semesters and I'll tell you much, much more!

How did we go from exhaust to plasma? Next is matter - anti matter...

Seemefly, the fuel burns in the engine. The tank, under pressure from the muffler or a pump, feeds liquid fuel to the carburetor via the needle valve, which regulates the amount of fuel that passes by and into the carburator, which gets in the air flow and becomes atomized or as a sort of wet vapor. The carb mixes the atomized fuel with air and creates a fuel-air mixture. Because air has oxygen in it, this is the agent that enables the fuel to burn.

So, when it goes into the engine on the intake and compression stroke (two stroke engines combine those into one action where four strokes have separate actions for each function) then as soon as the piston goes to the top of the stroke, the fuel burns, (which is an oxidation process) very fast and pushes the piston in the power and exhaust stroke, which is the second half of the two stroke function. The burned fuel then exits the engine as a gas, which is the result of the oxidation under heat and the expansion of the gasses is what causes the piston to move down. Inertia, or the property of matter to continue in motion, causes the pistion to begin the next process, or begins the two stroke process over again.

The fuel that enters the engine for burning also has the oil in it that coats metal parts in the bottom of the engine and lubricates it. The fuel/oil-air mixture that comes out of the carb and into the engine goes through the bottom of the engine, called the crankcase then is ported into the engine to the top of the piston on the bottom of and at the end of the power/exhaust stroke.

The gas that comes out of the exhaust port is the result of the burning alchohol and nitro-methane. The oil burns a bit, which causes the smoke, but mostly comes out as a hot liquid and goes all over your wing. Some fuel also comes out the exhaust as unburned fuel. It cools the engine. Without it, the engine would overheat and probably seize up.

The make up of exhaust was defined above. Mostly a burned or oxidized fuel-air mixture plus oil.

CGr.

Gray goo.....Rog

Well, with S&W. it's red..