Nitro Car Heads For A Brighter Future UW Team’s Nonpolluting Vehicle Offers Answer To Global Warming

It looks like a postal delivery van at first, but the engine looks anything but normal.

It doesn’t run normally, either.

The car, designed and built by a team at the University of Washington Aeronautics and Astrophysics Department, is powered by nonpolluting nitrogen.

“It doesn’t pollute,” said Adam Bruckner, an aeronautics and astronautics professor. “It’s just putting into the atmosphere what we take out.”

The car displayed Monday is the brainchild of Abe Hertzberg, professor emeritus of aeronautics and astronautics, and was assembled by three graduate students and four undergraduates with a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy.

Hertzberg says the car actually consumes pollution by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Gasoline, coal and other fossil fuels produce the biggest source of additional carbon dioxide, the primary cause of the greenhouse effect that some blame for causing global warming.

Liquid nitrogen is made by cooling air. Oxygen and carbon dioxide are separated, the oxygen for sale and the carbon dioxide for injection into natural-gas fields to enhance production.

That result is “a way of reversing the trend of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations” in the atmosphere, Hertzberg said.

In addition, a nitro car does without the toxic, heavy metals and powerful acids used in battery-powered electric cars while matching or exceeding their performance.

The prototype holds liquid nitrogen, which must be kept colder than 320 degrees below zero, in an insulated vat. The liquid is then run through a maze of tubing with air blown through it. As the nitrogen vaporizes, it expands about 700-fold, driving a small piston engine - in effect, a nitrogen-powered version of a steam engine.

Hertzberg said improvements in engine design could mean a 60-gallon tank would be enough for 200 miles of travel.

More than 20 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere consists of nitrogen. Auto experts considered harnessing the substance more than 20 years ago.

The university team claims to have solved a critical technical problem: keeping the heat exchanger from icing up.

The next issue is getting the car to go uphill. The prototype’s 15-horsepower engine struggled up even a slight incline.

Moreover, although liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap to produce, the process requires electricity - generated mostly by burning fossil fuels.

Amory Lovins, who designs lightweight, fuel-efficient “hypercars” as director of research at the Aspen, Colo., Rocky Mountain Institute, says nitro cars are “a fun idea.”

He said the university’s model might have advantages over battery-driven cars but added, “my guess is it will not have advantages over other propulsion systems.”