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What is nitrous oxide?

What is nitrous oxide?

Chances are, you have heard of nitrous oxide used in vehicles before, but you might not know what is nitrous oxide and what exactly it does. It is able to improve your vehicle driving performance, but this is only really necessary if you are looking to improve acceleration and general power of the vehicle.

When asking yourself how does nitrous oxide work, it really is general chemistry. When nitrous oxide heats to around 570 degrees, it separates into both oxygen and nitrogen. When doing this it helps increase the amount of oxygen that is available during general combustion in the engine. The more oxygen you have, the more power the engine is able to produce. Beyond this though, when it comes down to how does nitrous oxide work, it has a cooling effect on the intake air as well, which cuts the air temperature and helps reduce the amount of heat on the engine block.

Nitrous oxide does require a larger tank to function though, which is why vehicles such as street race cars have a separate tank for just the nitrous oxide. The nitrous oxide is compressed into a liquid. Due to the overall size and bulk of the tanks required to heat it and to maintain it, a vehicle is usually just going to have a tank that can hold a few minutes worth of the nitrous oxide. When it comes down to what is nitrous oxide, it is nothing more than a chemical compound that allows you to increase the performance of any vehicle. It is possible to additionally install such a tank into your vehicle and than have a manual switch that allows you to control when the nitrous oxide is used, just in case you need a boost in performance at a given time while driving.

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It is important to realize that just because you have more power does not mean you are able to tow more or carry more in the vehicle. Power should not be confused with torque, so if you try to tow more than what the vehicle frame may allow, you are just going to cause significant damage to the frame of the vehicle. It is necessary to take all of this into consideration when deciding on if nitrous oxide is right for your vehicle.