Open AccessNitrogen oxides in internal combustion engine gases
Author(s) -
Timothy Hanson,
Alfred Charles Egerton
Publication year - 1937
Publication title -
proceedings of the royal society of london. series a, mathematical and physical sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.814
H-Index - 135
eISSN - 2053-9169
pISSN - 0080-4630
DOI - 10.1098/rspa.1937.0212
Subject(s) - combustion , nitrogen , chemistry , cylinder , peroxide , nitric oxide , nitrogen oxides , nitrogen oxide , inorganic chemistry , nox , analytical chemistry (journal) , organic chemistry , waste management , mechanical engineering , engineering
An account was given in a paper entitled “Proknocks and Hydrocarbon Combustion” (Ubbelohde, Drinkwater and Egerton 1935) of some experiments made to trace the source of the nitrogen peroxide which had been found by sampling the products from the cylinder of a petrol engine at various stages of the stroke. Those experiments indicated that it was not simply a matter of nitric oxide formed by the flame giving rise to the nitrogen peroxide, for different results were obtained using different exhaust-valve surfaces. Nevertheless it seemed probable that the flame should be mainly responsible for the formation of nitric oxide, and so further experiments have been made. In order to make progress it was essential to determine the amount of nitric oxide as well as the amount of nitrogen peroxide, and analytical methods had to be devised to do this. The first part of this note deals with the methods of determining small quantities (of the order of 10-4 mol. fraction) of total nitrogen oxides and of nitrogen peroxide, and the second part with the results of analyses of the gases sampled from the cylinder of internal combustion engines by the methods described by Egerton, Smith and Ubbelohde (1935) and by Drinkwater and Egerton for the C. I. engine in a paper shortly to be published.