At a rate of a 12 x 14 ft room per gallon, a small house full of air would be consumed by 5 gallons of fuel being burned. 20% of which, is that increasingly rare commodity, oxygen.
But to burn fuel, or anything else, we need oxygen and that comes, at least in the case of most engines, straight from the air. To burn petrol efficiently in an engine it needs to be mixed with about 14 times its own weight of air. For best power about 12.6 times as much air and for cruise conditions and good economy about 15 times as much. A gallon of petrol (UK gallon) weighs about 7.5 pounds - so every gallon of fuel needs about 100 pounds of air. Air weighs just over 2 pounds per cubic yard so that translates into about 50 cubic yards of air per gallon of fuel. To put it into perspective, that's about the same volume of air as in a room 12 feet by 14 feet.Only registered users can write comments.
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