We all know that in an aircraft with avgas-fuelled engine(s), as we increase altitude, we lean the fuel mixture. To my simple understanding (I'm no engineer), this is done in order that the amount of fuel in the "mix" is decreased in line with the amount of oxygen being ingested from the increasingly less dense air, in order to maintain optimum engine power output and operating parameters.
This has the very obvious benefit of reducing the amount of fuel used, as we again are all aware, with the attendant quite dramatic cost savings.
So, my question is this. Why can't the amount of oxygen (and presumably all the other component parts of "air") be artifically reduced (by some damnably clever contraption) down at sea-level, thereby allowing the amount of fuel used to be reduced ? In effect setting up an artifical altitude, which could be maintained until the aircraft actually passes through the real equivalent.
Reduced pollution, grants for development, positive publicity for GA - cor, what a cracker !
Come on then, shoot me down ....
FF
CEO, FF-OxyThinner Ltd (TM, (c) 2008)