So I have another thread where I'm discussing MPG gains, but this idea is potentially able to add more power - or more MPG, I'm not sure.
Engines run on 2 different fuels, right? Oxygen and Diesel/Gas/LPG/CNG depending on your engine.
Everyone plays with the second one, but not the first one.
Oxygen comes in more than one form... Ozone is incredibly more explosive than run of the mill air. It burns faster and hotter, at lower concentrations.
So what would happen if you installed an ozone generator in your air intake?
Because my ex wife bought one, and I somehow ended up with it and I've got to wondering...
Oxygen isn't a fuel, it's what we use to oxidize the fuel to extract its energy to heat the intake charge, for bonus pedantic points.
"More explosive" isn't really a good thing. Combustion in an engine isn't so much an explosion as a fast, controlled burn. When it all goes off at once, we call that detonation.
From a chemical standpoint, it's O3 instead of O2; air's Google-says-21% Oxygen. So if the oxygen is available for oxidation, you could add more fuel if you were getting a meaningful amount of ozone in there, I guess.
I strongly suspect that there are larger issues here that are way beyond me. Your mention of explosiveness, and the fact that the only search hit I got about oxidation in an ozone atmosphere had to do with explosives and high peak pressures suggests that it's not well suited to automotive use, apart from any issues of practicality or applicability.
You know the smell of 'electricity' or more commonly known as slot car smell?
That's ozone! The sparks generated by slot cars convert small amounts of available o2 to o3...
Other than that I got nothing.
We do that already. It's called nitrous oxide. N2O is used to introduce more oxygen into an engine so it can burn more fuel and make more power. It was originally developed by the Luftwaffe in WWII for high altitude use in fighter interceptors.
Other idea is O3 does not know when NOT TO react. So massive chemical attack and corrosion on delivery systems, combustion surfaces (like piston face pitting and valves).
If you are aspiring to be the next Caracaticus Potts, maybe revisit Smokey's 16:1CR + late valve timing ideas where he got mega HP and MPG out of a hot vapor engine Fiero...
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/hrdp-1009-what-ever-happened-to-smokeys-hot-vapor-engine/
I have a professional grade ozone generator used for removing biological stuff. i use it to clean the smoke smell from trucks. Which then have to be vented of ozone and the resulting dust from the ozone "burning" biological stuff to ash swept out.
Ozone in the concentration you want will break down the rubber compounds, mine will break down foam rubber padding if I let it run too long and the concentration gets too high. It is also bad for you in those concentrations. But it has to run for a while unless i use the optional oxygen feed to increase O3 output. (parts per million is what we are talking about here)
So I don't think it would increase the amount of oxygen available to the engine. I wonder if it might decrease the amount available (fractionally) as it reacted with grease, oil and rubber compounds in the intake track.
Think of it like this, you add chocolate to milk, it tastes different but you still have the same amount of milk, that is until you drain the glass because, well, its chocolate milk. Hmmmm, I gotto go...
Chemically speaking, oxygen is an "oxidizer" in a reduction-oxidation, while the gasoline or other fuel is the "reducer".
Yes, in theory you could use ozone as an oxidizer. In practice it doesn't work very well because it's really corrosive (so you can't store it easily), tends to spontaneously convert itself back to O2, and because you can't generate a meaningful amount of it compared to the air that a gasoline engine consumes. You need somewhere around 3/4 CFM of air (at sea level) for every horsepower you want. Air is about 20% oxygen, and ozone gives you 50% more oxygen molecules, but you're still talking about 1 CFM per 10 horsepower. That's way more than you're going to make with an ozone generator.
There are a number of theoretical alternate oxidizers you could carry along with you to increase power, but of those only nitrous is really practical, and then only for brief boosts of power (effectively drag racing). Others are either cryogenic (liquid oxygen), unstable (high-test hydrogen peroxide), corrosive (nitric acid), toxic (nitrogen tetroxide) or some combination of the above. :) Dealing with oxidizers is a big part of what makes "rocket science" hard.
You could also experiment with oxygenated fuels, but that's an area tightly controlled by sanctioning bodies. Nitro methane comes to mind... straight methanol also comes to mind.
