Air Tires Versus Nitrogen Tire

Mr. B. Kerr, you mentioned that your tires were filled with pure nitrogen, and the mechanic told you some information about nitrogen. Then he told that nitrogen is much less leakage from car tires than air. Is the information true? Yes, he is right about the leakage of nitrogen from car tires, but another he told is not true.

Initially, the mechanic was wrong about air is most oxygen. Today, most tires are filled with air, which consists of 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent other gas by volume. In air, humidity which is bad thing to have inside a tire can make up as much as 5 percent of the volume of air under worst-case conditions. Water presents inside car tire as vapor or liquid, causes more changing of pressure. Next, the mechanic said that nitrogen molecules were a much smaller size than oxygen molecules so there was much less leakage from car tires. That is totally wrong. If the molecules of nitrogen was smaller than oxygen molecules, nitrogen would be much more leakage from car tires. Because of the small molecules, nitrogen can migrate through the vent of tire and tire walls easily. In fact, the nitrogen molecules are bigger than oxygen molecules. Therefore, filling your tires with pure nitrogen has two mainly advantages: it eliminates moisture, and it replaces skinny oxygen molecules with fat molecules nitrogen, reducing the leakage of compressed gas through tire walls.

Filling your tires with 100% nitrogen is better than with oxygen, because it reducing the water inside your tires and much less leakage from the tires.