Nitrious oxide power?

[john bunsenburner]

As most of you i have heeps and heeps of things lying around my house which i barely know they exist, lately i found a box of these cream blower cylinders which contain nitrious oxide(ok please do not ask why i got them in the first place). I wondered wether or not they are worth a try on a gun, what do you think?

[VH_man]

Nitrious oxide is a gas.............

[john bunsenburner]

yes, so it could power a pneumatic gun right?

[jmeyer1022]

a combustion yes and it would blow the chamber apart i'm guessing

[john bunsenburner]

oh u mean as an oxidizer? That would work but would probably fall under explosions and woul therefore be forbidden on this forum, though it is a grat idea i was thinking od just ussing the highly pressuized n2o in the cylinder like co2, would that work?

[Hotwired]

And why would that be?

Nitrous oxide is not explosive, it's not even as good as pure oxygen and a stoichiometric fuel/oxygen mix is still not going to blow apart any correctly made basic combustion.

The cartridges are pressurised and if you had the fittings to tap the gas you could use them, maybe a pellet gun.

[john bunsenburner]

Well yes but if you think about it a fuel and n2o mix is considered an explosive becuse it contains all the chemicals needed to make such an explosive and does not require oxygen. But im not really talking about that, im talking about using it to power a pneumatic cannon, oh and does any one know the pressure in those cylinders? I can not find it any where on the web... maybe some one could test them for me or give me a URL to a site which does have the pressure mentioned...I could also just call the producerand ask but living in Switzerland they might call the police on me...

[Hotwired]

Can't find one atm but if you like you could work it out from the description here.

8g Nitrous Oxide in a 10cc space.

I would but I've got to be off for 2-3 hours now.

[D_Hall]

Nitrous oxide can in fact be an explosive under the right circumstances (all by itself, no fuel required!).... And those circumstances involve the filling of pressure vessels(*). The point being that if you treat Nitrous like it's just another play thing, it most certainly CAN bite you.

Other than that little aside, used by itself in a pneumatic it ought to give you VERY similar performance to CO2. Thermodynamically it's almost identical.




(*) The mechanisms are somewhat lengthy to explain but well understood. Don't have the time to type them now but if somebody's curious I could do it later. In any event, it's most likely what happened at Scaled Composites a couple years back when they had the explosion that killed a couple people (one of whom I'd gone to high school with).

[john bunsenburner]

OK i think that after calclating this, atleast a certain percentage of the n2o in the container would have to liquid or even solid, so i cant really figure out the pressure can i?

[john bunsenburner]

oops u beat me to it, ok one more question then: what could be better, to use n2o or a hand pump? or co2, which is strongest? Oh and which is the least dangerous( sorry about your friend...) Oh and i found out the pressure in those cylinders: 61bar pressure at room temp and im checking the volume the price is 8.80chf(swiss franks) for a pack of 10. Is this a good deal, should i use them or not?


EDIT: nevermind about the volume i cant figure it out because i lost my mesuring cylinder and no scales in my house are any good...You can find out by the info given oh and the weight of the gas is 7.5 grams

[seudo411]

I also have some of these lying around, the iSi one made in Austria weigh 28 grams, consisting of 8 grams of Nitrous Oxide and a 20gram steel cylinder. I have been looking on to some options from this site: http://www.co2pros.com and here is some info on an 8gram cylinder :http://www.co2pros.com/cartridges/co2/2042.htm.

I was wondering if a standard co2 inflater made for 12gram co2, would work with the 8 gram canisters. The reason is they connect directly to schrader valves.

Any one know if thats possible.

[john bunsenburner]

thats post doesnt really help me at all...

[jimmy101]

N2O should behave about the same as CO2. It's stored as a liquid under pressure in the cartridge the same as CO2. The critical pressure is about 60 bar (870 PSI).

The small cartridges contain 8g N2O, and since the molecular weight is the same as CO2 it contains the same number of moles of gas as the corresponding CO2 cartridge.

Should be useable the same as a CO2 tank and will have all the advantages and problems of CO2, such as the possibility of getting very high chamber pressures, cooling affects etc.

[john bunsenburner]

What about the price? 11cents per gram?