Which is more powerful... nitro or gas?

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I don’t think you can really answer that question without more information. First off the question is nitro or gas. Nitromethane is a chemical mixed into alcohol or gasoline. So the question is really what has more power alcohol with nitromethane or gasoline. From there it all depends on the engine. Power is heat and alcohol runs cooler and you can pump more power from a nitro/alcohol engine of a given size. But in the real world gasoline is easy to control because of the ignition system.

On a side note. You can not purchase nitromethane in bulk without a very specific license. It’s very dangerous when mixed with gasoline. I worked on a nitro bike team and it crazy stuff.
 
In simple terms nitromethane carries oxygen molecules. and can bring oxygen to the combustion process. So you mix it with something like alcohol that contains less energy than gasoline but you can control the reaction and not have the engine blow up. Also you can get more of it into the engine.
It is possible to get more oxygen and fuel inside an engine to burn with air, nitromethane and alcohol than with air and gasoline so it makes more power.
Nitromethane and alcohol is a liquid being pumped and not a gas that flows and quickly becomes thinner when heated.
So nitromethane is used in drag cars where combustion is strictly controlled over a short period of time and tiny engines because it kind of cheats and lets you be somewhat sloppy with a fuel air mixture in a tiny combustion chamber and yet get an engine to run.
 
From an rc engine standpoint at least with airplanes I ran nitro for ever and it’s great. The fuel now cost $30.00 a gallon. The gas engine I have starts immediately, runs perfectly and turns off with a switch from the transmitter. Never had a reason to adjust the carb after it was first set up. And when you get to 30-50cc engines . You can burn a lot of fuel.
 
Nitro has the high rpm. Gas has the torque.
 
A nitro burning supercharged V-8 in a top fuel dragster
typically has 496 cubic inches
Is fueled by 90% nitromethane and 10% alcohol
makes 7000 horsepower, some are claimed to make 10,000 to 12,0000hp
uses 15 gallons of fuel to go a quarter mile
It uses 1000hp to drive the supercharger
This is an 8 cylinder engine with 2 valves per cylinder using pushrods from a single camshaft with a belt driven supercharger.


a supercharged 500 inch gasoline engine
makes 1050hp on gas and 1150hp on E85

A 16 cylinder 8 liter (490 cu in) Bugatti Veyron makes 1200hp with every bit of help a modern engine can have including 4 valves per cylinder and 4 turbochargers that do not use power from the engine to be driven.

Very different animals but the same sizes and configurations. The difference is in the characteristics of the fuel and how it works.
Gas needs 14.7kg of air for every kg of gas burned
Nitro power needs 1.7 kg of air per kg of fuel.
The engines move air the same way but the nitro engine can burn 8 times the amount of fuel a gas engine of the same configuation can.

so despite nitromethane having less energetic potential per kilogram (11,2 MJ/kg against 44 MJ/kg), the incredibly high amount you can burn in a short time makes it so much more efficient: a regular engine powered by nitromethane makes around 2.5 times the power of that same engine running on standard gasoline.

I kind of knew this but found it interesting reading a few websites about this and smashing some of it together for here.

Outside of a pure racing scenario a gas engine will make plenty of power and be much easier to live with.
Except if your engine is very tiny and needs to move something like a model monster truck. Then the crappy fuel mileage and amount of expensive fuel needed is not cost prohibitive.
 

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