Nitrogen For Tyres-Benefits And Drawbacks

Nitrogen for Tyres - Benefits & Drawbacks
For a while, nitrogen gas has been used to inflate the tyres of aircraft, heavy commercial vehicles and racing cars. Nevertheless, nitrogen gas has come into use in standard passenger cars only lately. So, what is nitrogen and how is nitrogen gas beneficial. Nitrogen is an odourless, colourless, tasteless and non-toxic gas that constitutes approximately 78% of the Earth's atmosphere. The advantages so far claimed for nitrogen over compressed air for inflating tyres are mentioned below:
• Maintains more stable tyre pressure
• It does not react with the tyre and rim materials
• It lowers running temperature of the tyres
• Slows down pressure loss rate
These points are explained in brief below:
Nitrogen

If you have filled your car's tyres with nitrogen, then it is vital to use nitrogen only for topping up the tyres. Because pumping in ordinary compressed air will nullify any benefits of the nitrogen.
However, if you are inside a region where nitrogen is not available and topping up your car's tyres is essential, then add ordinary compressed air. Nonetheless, if you want to retrieve the advantages of nitrogen, once you are in the place where nitrogen is available, you will have to deflate your car's tyres, and then using nitrogen, you need to inflate all the tyres.
Cost
The usual charge for filling nitrogen in a passenger car tyre is in the range of $5 to $10 per tyre.
Things to ponder
• The earth's atmosphere contains around 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen with a few detected gases blended in, so when you inflate your car's tyres with compressed air, you will get around 78% nitrogen.
• All aircrafts do not use nitrogen in their tyres; actually, only bigger aircraft with high altitude capability and high loads and high landing and take-off speeds use it. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority gives the reason to support the use of nitrogen is that - being a comparatively motionless gas, it lowers the risk of high altitude tyre explosions that could harm or ruin an aircraft. Clearly, this is barely a concern for the average passenger car