Get rid of the N?
Gasoline and diesel are both hydrocarbons, and if burned with pure oxygen would produce water and carbon dioxide. But burned in air, which contains a lot of nitrogen, some other compounds are produced as well, especially as the temperature rises. Indeed, it will in a diesel running at low power, where a tiny amount of fuel finds a vast amount of oxygen and burns like crazy. This results in high temperatures and NOx – the x being the classic variable to denote that various numbers of oxygen molecules can be bound to one of nitrogen.
Then why not just remove the nitrogen from the air?
There are a number of ways of doing this for medical and industrial applications. Surely one or more of these methods could be applied to diesel engines.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
