🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bzu6DJ.I6v@ns1.nodak.edu> csmith@plains.NoDak.edu (Carl Smith) writes:
>In article <1992Dec25.134459.7728@ke4zv.uucp> gary@ke4zv.UUCP (Gary Coffman) writes:
>
>>You don't understand. The gasoline *does* contain the same amount of
>>energy as the flywheel, that's the whole point of the exercise. But
>>liquid gasoline can't explode. Only gasoline vapor properly mixed
>>with oxygen, 14:1 air/fuel ratio, can explode. 
>
>Normally I wouldn't find fault with such an insignificant detail, but
>I have seen this so many times during this tread that I thought I would
>make a comment.  14:1 is the IDEAL mixture, but there is a rather wide
>range over which the mixture will ignite.  Eventually it will be so rich
>that it will be hard to ignite due to "lack of oxygen," and in the other
>direction there can be so little gas fumes that you couldn't cause an
>explosion.  You don't need perfect 14:1 to cause an explosion.

Right, only if you want a significant portion of the energy of the 
gasoline to be released do you need a stoichemetric mixture. Richer
or leaner mixtures will explode, but very inefficiently with most
of the energy released slowly in the form of smokey combustion.

Gary
-- 
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