Afaik, in theory, by replacing the air intake with pure oxygen a power
increase of up to 5x is possible (air is ~20% oxygen, and that's all that
burns in an engine, with the fuel). Of course this means 5x heat
dissipation in the engine, so it will turn into a molten puddle of metal
very soon unless specially constructed, and it can only be tried with
direct injection engines (Diesel - oxygen ignites on contact with any oil
or fuel and it would explode in the intake manifold of any carb or
external injection engine), you can't use normal gaskets anywhere on the
intake side, special oil, etc.

Also several attempts were made to boost engine performance. One of them
was oxygen injection into the air intake. F.ex. 5% oxygen addition to the
normal intake air should give at most 25% more power (accompanied by
suitable injection settings). A normal engine may even withstand this
abuse for a while. Nowadays people prefer to use Nitromethane.

High performance engines that are supercharged often use an intercooler,
to cool the air between the compressor and the intake manifold, to
increase charge density. The difference (vs. no intercooler) can be as
much as 50% charge density for supercharged car engines afaik.

Peter

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