Nitrogen is already being used to inflate tyres on Formula 1 cars and jumbo jets. Can ordinary road users benefit from inflating their tyres with the gas in its pure form?
Nitronics Systems of Lafayette, Colorado in the United States has urged the motoring public to inflate their tyres with nitrogen, saying that it would result in better mileage, improved road safety and national energy savings.
"Nitrogen stays in a tyre longer than air does and therefore gives the owner better fuel mileage, and the resultant energy savings occur year round," said Nitronics president Nick Verini. The US Department of Energy has stated that "every day motorists in the US are losing over two million gallons (7,6 million litres) of fuel due to low pressure in their tyres."
Nitrogen is widely used in tyres for commercial and military aircraft, mining equipment, F1, Indy and NASCAR, car air bags and tyre manufacturing.
But what are the chances of South African motorists reaping the purported benefits of inflating their tyres with nitrogen?
"Oxygen and moisture are a tyre’s worst enemy and dry nitrogen helps to extend the life of a tyre by 25 to 30 per cent," says Cheryl Toomey, vice president of sales at Nitronics. "The air we breathe is 78 per cent nitrogen and 21 per cent oxygen. Nitrogen gas is noncombustible, nonflammable, noncorrosive in pure form and environmentally friendly."
However, CAR magazine’s technical editor Jake Venter believes that the elimination of the 21 per cent oxygen from air used to inflate consumers’ tyres, would not result in substantial benefits.
"Not only is pure nitrogen or the equipment to dispense it difficult to find, but inflating tyres with nitrogen would only extend the life of the tyre by two per cent at best," said Venter.
It appears as if the best way that consumers can limit tyre wear, and sustain fuel efficiency, would still be to regularly check tyre pressure. In contrast to the US, where nitrogen is available at a reasonable cost and tyre filling stations can operate on either nitrogen cylinder gas or nitrogen generators, most South African filling stations do not yet have those facilities.