Supercritical fuel injection
Link =
Supercritical Fuel Injection | MIT Technology Review
Wow seems pretty high tech
In a nutshell they are preheating the diesel before injection. They heat the diesel to 450 degrees Celsius under high pressure. They say they achieve it by utilizing the engines exhaust.
To me I think this would be difficult to achieve sustained high temps consistently. Some kind of electrically controlled flash boiler or transducer may be needed for system reliability. One would also have to be careful of starving the diesel engine. To me this would be like the ultimate way of leaning out the engine. We all know when you lean it out to much on a diesel it just dies on you! However by utilizing water/meth injection in conjunction may provide the needed fuel boost for steady reliable operation under load. Just up the meth to water ratio to improve combustion and prevent water lock.
I have heard of quite a few people trying to do this with gas cars as its much easier to vaporize gas fuel. However most people have mixed results as its supposedly hard to control and obtain the right air/fuel mixtures under the various driving conditions. To me the system would need to be variable in its operation to be effective. It would have to be able to adjust to the varying engine loads to be effective.
The other side similar to this supercritical fuel injection is fuel evaporation. Again used in gas tech and would not be applicable to diesels as they do not evaporate near as easily as gas.
Here is a link to one such unit I came across some time ago that seems to work reliably =
1st AGS Gasoline (Manufacturer of the Fuel Vaporizer MPG System) Carburetor Vaporizer Fuel Adapter
I think the term supercritical is simply a fancy term for vaporizing the fuel and is something that has been experimented with for along time. I think this is on the lines of the holy grail to supreme fuel economy. Supreme fuel economy would be in my opinion getting over 240mpg. It is encouraging that somebody is trying it with diesel because to this point there has been little attention given in this area of potential gain for diesel technology.
This research sets the stage for catalytic fuel cracking and is the holy grail of supreme fuel economy
If a person was able to achieve this in an diesel or gas auto of average size they would be able to easily achieve 200+ mpg figures However we probably would not see them around to long LOL!
So some interesting concepts to think about as it pertains to increasing diesel engine efficiency.
GH..