Reading throught this thread really peaked my interest. There are a lot of
topics being discussed here relating to auto fuels and efficencies and this is
something I have been interested in and have been collecting information on for
a while, so here is my two (or maybe 3 :) ) cent's worth.
I think the first thing we must remember when dealing with this is how cars and
trucks are produced. I am currently rebuilding my old Chevy truck from the
ground up and have ended up spending a lot of time making many parts better
than original. The car companies produce cars as cheaply and as low of quality
as they can get away with with out trying to lose customers so unless you want
to spend $75000 on a dodge viper which has a lot of inovative ideas into it
and maybe fancy alloys and such, you are only going to see the cheapest steel,
aluminum and plastic used in your average car, this also will go into the
powerplant, there are many other designs of engines out there (Wankel is one of
them) and much more efficent ways of running them than carbs or fuel injection
and better fuels than standard gasoline, but these would cost time and money to
research and develop, so the engine you see coming out of detroit is the
cheapest and easiest for them to make. Also I know in the US the Gov't collects
somewhere between 40 and 50 cents tax per gallon of gas, so anything that
would increase milage or be used in place of gas would seriously cut a large
chunk of tax money they collect. So keep these in mind when discussing these
topics.
As far as the topic of water injection, it does a few things. One is that it
absorbs heat very well (when injected in liquid for not gas) so it can be used
where you might want to try and run an engine on the lean side (which causes
exhaust temp to go up and could lead to burning up exhaust valves) or could be
added to burning of other fues that burn hotter to combat the heat problem.
Water also raises the octane as good as lead does. We learned this in my
Advanced thermodynamics class, don't remember off hand why or how but I know we
discussed that it did and did it very well. Speaking of Lead you might want to
go to: http://www.mpx.com.au/~nexusmagazine/ulp1.html
http://www.mpx.com.au/~nexusmagazine/ulp2.html
http://www.mpx.com.au/~nexusmagazine/ulp3.html
and read about how lead is a far safer additive for octane than most of the
"stuff" that is added today, although lead in itself is not really very safe
either. Water can also increase the power since it expand quite a bit when it
changes from liquid to vapor. The problem with it is that it takes time to do
this and todays engines all run 1000 to 2000 rpm faster than engines from the
70 or early 80's so unless you are cruising in overdrive you might not have
enough time in the engine cycle to let the water vaporize and add power bwefore
the exhaust valve open, I know when you add a water system you also have to
change the timing (5 degrees retarded I believe) however the exact amout may
vary with rpm, load and temp as would the amount you would want to inject. One
last thing that water does is clean the engine, it helps keep carbon deposits
from forming on the piston and keeps the whole engine cleaner, however I would
suggest a purging system on the PCV hose to help condese out the water vapor
that gets past the rings and into the crankcase, since water in the oil is
something you don't want, for a system to do this see:
http://spiritweb.org/KeelyNet/Energy/pcv.asc.html
I wouldn't count on the 25% milage gain, but it definitly helps filter out and
clean the engine, for milage gain with this you may want to try different
compounds in the "can" rather than BB's, J Bruce McBurney whose website is at:
http://www.himacresearch.com/
He has an excellent grasp on ideas to increase milage and the whole picture on
how gasoline in put into engines inefficently.
This fall I will be taking a microprossesor class for school where we will
learn how to program and hook up microprossesors into circuits and for my final
project in there I am going to try and build a water injecting system for my
truck, where it can vary the amount injected based on load, engine speed and
maybe some other things, I am not sure how complicated it will be, But I will
post and info and how it worked out and such on a web page for the rest on the
list interested in this.
A little about hydrogen.... I know several years ago a european car acompoany
BMW??? I think had developed some test cars that ran on hyrogen and ran very
well. One problem is that it can react with the oil and most importantly the
cylinder walls and cause them to become brittle so care would need to be taken
in finding a cylinder wall sleeve that would not be affected by it. The largest
problem with hydrogen is its availibility and storage. For one its not all over
it must be manufactured and it is not cheap. As far as I know electrolysis is
the only common method of producing it and that takes lots of electricity which
can be made by burning coal or oil which really doesn't sove the problem of gas
polluting engine, just shifts them to gas polluting hydrogen plants. Although
there was a thread here a while ago about electrolysis with pulsed power or
some other means, might want to go back and read that and see if there was
anything worth looking at in it. The second problem is storage, you can't store
hydrogen like gasoline, it has to be in a completely sealed and pressureized
tank or it can explode (or leak out) where as gasoline is not as volitile
(althought its vapors can be) so the fact that it is so explosive leads to may
storage and fuel delivery problem and mostly saftey concers for auto makers,
plus they still don't know how to store enough hydrogen on a car to make it
worthwhile. I think using a metal hydride was as close as they cam where it
actually combined with some metal and could be easily "uncombined" and gotten
back out to be used but in order to store enough to equal a 15 gallon gas tank
full they still need a lot larger tank than that 15 gallon gas tank. But keep
in mind it does work and if there was some serious research into it and a lot
of engineering I think that a workable solution could be attained.
As far as gasoline goes from all that I have read (see J Bruce McBurneys page
and also see the Eagle research page at: http://www.eagle-research.com/
as well as these pages
http://www.friend.ly.net/GEET/
http://www.splitcycle.com.au/
http://www.aquamist.co.uk/index.html
the way gasoline is put into engines today is wrong, devices such as EGR
systems and catylictic convertes are useless since they are trying to bandaid a
would rather than fixing the source which is how gas in intoduces into the
engine, gasoline in its liquid for will not burn, take some throw it on the
floor (cement) and light it on fire, it burns but what is burning is the vapors
coming off of it, if you blow out the flame you still have a puddle of liquid
gas there. so the problem with all fuel delivery system in use is that they are
dumping (or spraying as in EFI systems) liquid gas into the system, only the
amount that has time to evaporate will burn in the cylinder and produce power,
the rest might burn in the exhaust or be recirculated with the exhaust via an
EGR system or is burnt in a catylictic converter so here we are burning the
remains of unburned hydrocarbons to try and get emissions down without getting
any power from it, a vapor system is what is needed. One where all the gas is
evaporated then mixed in the correct ratio and then fed into the engine. Even
better is a system that first breaks down all of the larger hydrocarbon chains
in gas (via a catylist) and then evaporates this and mixes and feeds the
mixture into the engine. This is some of the info on Eagle Reaserch and J.
Bruce McBurney's page. Also if you do a search of the IBM or other patent
servers I am sure you will find many patents on vapor systems. If you want, let
me know and I will go through my list of ones I have downloaded and post any
relevant numbers, I also have a couple that are too old to be on the server I
have copies of that are particularly interesting, will try to scan them in and
get them posted this fall sometime.
One last thing, goto: http://216.60.190.54/energy/garrett.htm
this is a copy of patent for an ELECTROLYTIC CARBURETOR from 1935, Jerry Decker
graciously went through all the the trouble with the patent office to get it
and typed it up for us. It is an interesting read and would be worthwhile
trying to build at some point after I graduate and have the time and money.
Basically it uses electrolosis to break down water and then feed it into the
engine and burn it, however if it works or not I don't know, but a good
understanding of it and some experimentation would prove worthwhile.
Well thats my 3 cents worth on the subject, this is an area that I am
interested in and continue to work on as time and finaces permit, anyone who
has any additional info please contact me. Also those water infection kits in
edmund scientific, were they in the normal catolog, don't remember seeing them
but I will have to dig out my last catolog and look through it, might be
something worthwhile to start out with....
Garrett Herning
herning@uwplatt.edu