tires with nitrogen

No that's in the sequel Daniel. The good guy gets caught in the same situation, and just when you think he's going to escape the same way, you spot the dreaded green caps. He tries to breath it for a minute but as expected he has to surface. Anyway he come up speaking like Donald Duck and the bad guys get frightened because they think he's possessed and run away.
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In the sequel, the good guy has tires filled with helium. The lack of breathable air forces him to the surface, but his squeaky Donald Duck voice causes the bad guys to collapse in laughter, allowing him to tie their shoelaces together and then escape.

Tom

 

I fill all my tires with Krypton gas because the tire dealer said it would keep Superman away. I have never once seen Superman around any of my cars so I know it's working. Worth every penny.

 

If this were true, wouldn't Oxygen leak INTO a Nitrogen filled tire until the internal and external partial pressure of Oxygen was the same? Wouldn't this mean that your Nitrogen filled tire would slowly gain pressure and oxygen, eliminating the supposed benefits of eliminated oxidation, and forcing you to adjust your tire pressure?

 

Yes. If permeability were an issue, the partial pressures would adjust to be equal.

Tom

 

Unfortunately, at sea level standard atmospheric pressure is about 14 PSI. As much as I like violating the Laws of Physics, you are not going to get O2 to seep into a tire when that tire has 3X the pressure internally, 45PSI!!

 

Oh yes you are. I think you have forgotten some of the laws of physics. In this case only the partial pressure of O2 is involved in the equation, not the pressure of the other gases. You could have 30,000 psi of pure nitrogen on one side, and atmospheric air on the other, and O2 would diffuse into the high pressure side until its partial pressure equalized. In an ideal gas, the individual atoms do not interact. Essentially they wander around in a vacuum.

Tom

 

It is an interesting question, how long can you breathe nitrogen before you pass out. Most of the bodies sensors for breathing work on carbon dioxide concentration. So as long as you are getting rid of that, you don't notice anything wrong until your brain is very O2 starved, by which time of course, you aren't able to think clearly enough to do anything about it.

 

It is shorter than you'd think. You won't feel an urge to gasp for air since you will be expelling the carbon dioxide from your lungs, but as mentioned earlier with the partial pressures of gasses, since you are breathing pure nitrogen, oxygen will diffuse out of your blood into your lungs since your lungs are filled with pure Nitrogen gas. When you exhale you won't just be exhaling Nitrogen and Carbon dioxide, you'll also be expelling oxygen from your blood stream. This will result in oxygen diffusing out of your brain into your blood, causing you to lose consciousness sooner than the amount of time that you can normally hold your breath before losing consciousness. I accidentally tried it with helium from a party balloon once. Never felt an urge to gasp for breath, but scared my family as my face turned blue, speech slurred, and sounds and vision got fuzzy after about 45 seconds.

You'd be better off NOT breathing the supposedly pure Nitrogen from the tires and just holding your breath as long as you can. You'll maintain consciousness longer, and you'll receive a better indication of when you should risk surfacing for a quick gasp of air to avoid drowning.

 

PV=nRT

Only advantage to run N2 that I can think of is it is dry. You can accomplish the same thing with dry air. All my cars' tires are filled with N2, but that's only because it was free with tire purchase. I would never pay extra for it.

One thing that ticked me off is that when they did the Prius, they threw out my aluminum valve caps and replaced with green plastic POS's. I didn't really notice for a while. Oh well, not a big deal.