Nitrogen in tires?

Supposedly, much higher volumes of nitrogen can be compressed into a storage tank than plain old air. Nascar teams run their guns off of storage tanks, no live compressors involved. Have you ever seen the air tanks for off-roading? One tank of nitrogen will inflate several large tires where a regular air tank of higher capacity would only inflate 1 tire if you were lucky.

Like I said before, I don't have the science to back any of it up, but this is how I understand it.

Using nitrogen instead of compressed air has distinct advantages, which lead to immediate benefits.

It has more mass, so it migrates through the tire three to four times slower. The result: Tires hold their psi longer.

It runs about 20% cooler. Less heat results in less tire degradation.

It drastically reduces oxidation on the rim and inner-liner (nitrogen systems almost totally eliminate oxygen -- the cause of oxidation -- from the mix).

It is environmentally safe.

CONS:

Look for the CTE's (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion) for N2 and regular air, and Thermal Conductivity properties. There won't be much difference, as air is ~78% nitrogen anyway.
The Diatomic Radii of N2 & O2

* N2 = 1.4 Å
* O2 = 1.32 Å

So... Diatomic Nitrogen is 0.08 angstroms larger than O2. And again... air is only ~21% Oxygen. Therefore, the migration theory really doesn't seem to hold much water.

Nitrogen - Atomic Mass 14 vs Oxygen - Atomic Mass 16
So where does the Nitrogen get more mass??

How is Nitrogen on the inside of the tire (which is relatively immune from wear) going to reduce Oxidation, when the exterior of the tire is exposed to the atmosphere (~21% Oxygen; ~78% Nitrogen)

RESULT:

Anybodys guess!

Don"t know what you do for a living but this was one of the most impressive posts I have ever seen. I spent a lot of years representing a large aerospace casting manufacturer and we had our share of scientists and this one took me back in time.

Scary thing I found out when I was with those guys was that pretty soon I understood what they were talking about and I began to keep up with them.

Ah, the good old days..... ....

By the way, if racing didn"t use N2 they wouldn"t have a chance on selling it for street use. Marketing hype.

Its easy for a community race pit air source to pump so much air during a race period to include considerable water. The rest of us do drain our air tanks occasionally to remove the water, hoping to prolong the tank life.

Gerald J.

The work took me to Indianapolis, Fairfax, Batavia, Livonia, and Sharonville plants. Good people at all the plants who are very interested in delivering a very satisfying product at a reasonable cost. The most interesting project was the development of a pressure control system which involved an H.P VXIc Chassis with two embedded controllers, Alphi closed loop controllers, Atchley servo valves and Dynisco pressure transducers. We could control transmission oil pressure from 0 to 300 PSI at temps from -40 to 300 ºF with rise times of 90 milliseconds and hit the target within 3PSI regardless of the change in compliance of the applied component. Digital data sampling and analysis is a science unto itself. Pressure control in a transmission is open loop and is accomplished with Varible Force Solenoid and Pulse Width Modulated valves. Shift scheduling is done with On / Off solenoid valves.

Also worked for Muskegon Piston Ring where Ford was the most demanding customer.

Now, speaking of Nitrogen in you tires, you wouldn't be interested in feul line magnets, swirl-a-gigs for your air intake, or some goo to put in your oil which will pop the seals off your valve stems the first time you start in cold weather would you? Sorry for the long post.

Pretty impressive list of accomplishments you have there. I too worked with McDonnell Douglas on many projects but I was a supplier to them selling titanium investment castings in a variety of alloys for standard and also advanced applications. I was at Howmet in Whitehall most of the time, you may know them as Misco.

I loved the guys at MD as they were really down to earth (no pun intended). They wanted to take calculated risks where it made sense to push current technology to a higher level. Yours truly was involved with some significant milestones on the F-18 E/F program, X-36 tailess research demostrator and C-17 heavylifter for MD. It was a great time to be in aerospace about 15 years ago.

Not many people know that some significant flight structures on new aircraft such as the V-22 Osprey and the F-22 Raptor are now titanium castings because of the work that we did with key customers up in Whitehall, Michigan.

Sorry for the rant but I thought you would enjoy the story.

Tryin' to read between the lines here. The latest and greatest version of snake oil? :>)

Allan

If it increases profits then it's good for both the business and the customer right?

More of a state of mind than anything else.

Can I sell you a chromed induction tube and a special air filter unit which you can clean and put fresh oil on periodically? You never know when you will get your tractor up over 7000 RPM and need that extra air flow!

oh and I was really impressed with Verns posts Ihave not seen that stuff in the 20yrs since I graduated Engineering school.. and I kinda missed it.. sometimes cows just dont talk at your level you know that.

where as the outside of the tire is constantly in the same elements and would never run out of reactions..