Question: can you use could you use nitrogen to power things?

Dave Jones answered on 16 Jun 2014:

Nitrogen is pretty inert so you can’t use it like a normal fuel, burning it in an engine or whatever. But, you can get clever and use this property to your advantage. The fact that it doesn’t burn or explode makes it quite safe, so if you cool it down so much that it is a liquid, you can then use it as a fuel in a strange type of engine called a heat exchanger. As the liquid nitrogen warms up, taking in energy it’s surroundings you can use this to power an engine just as if a combustion engine where the burning of petrol is used transfer the energy. There are even cars which run on liquid nitrogen, check them out on youtube, they are pretty much just like electric cars!