Here are some ideas on Gasoline vapor:
Gasoline Vaporization
by George Wiseman and Geoffrey Tilga
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Tesla, Third Quarter,1997 vol VIII, Number3. Pages 8-15 Article:
"Gasoline Vaporization Using A Modified Stock Carburetor"
by George Wiseman and Geoffrey Tilga.
Atmospheric pollution from gasoline motor exhaust is
created by unburned hydrocarbons. These pollutants are
largely caused by the fact that gasoline is not totally
vaporized by the conventional carburetor system. In any
carburetor, gasoline is broken down into droplets or
particles and vapor. It is the vapor that explodes and
powers the internal combustion engine.
The droplets pass through the exhaust system as unburned
or partially burned hydrocarbons, i.e. pollution.
Gasoline can be vaporized more completely by the use of
heat and/or a mechanical action. If the light ends (i.e.,
fractions of gasoline that evaporate below 250 degrees
Fahrenheit) are vaporized, there is a corresponding
decrease in exhaust pollution and an increase in the
efficiency of the engine.
The use of heat and/or mechanical action to improve
the amount of gasoline vaporized was documented in The
Scientific American Digest.1 This finding has been
replicated on modern stationary gasoline engines in the
Houston, Texas laboratories of the Shell Oil Company.2
In the Mills patent, for a device he calls the 'Vapipe',
Mills concludes: "The use of vaporized fuel enables a
gasoline engine to be run on such lean mixtures, even in
excess of 20:1 air to fuel ratio, that the levels of
carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen are simultaneously
low, thereby contributing to the abatement of environmental
pollution."3 Is it coincidental that Shell Oil
Company scientist Geoffrey Harrow of Wales, UK in his
patent "Device For Vaporizing Fuel" makes the identical
claim in exactly the same words?4 For further
reference material on the Mills patent, SAE Paper 760564 is
cited.5
The late Ray Covey, who used the Carburetor Enhancer
Method along with the heat exchanger described here,
was also awarded a patent for a vaporizer carburetor
#4,611,567 using exhaust heat to evaporate gasoline.
This vaporizer patent was originally assigned US Patent
Class 123, Subclass 545 A computer search of all
vaporizer patents in this subclass back to 1900 yielded
over five hundred patents! The reader can access all
patents granted after 1976 at
www.uspto.gov on the US
Patent Office database, through the Internet. Go to
'Search Patents' Use Covey's Patent number 4,611,567
proceed to 'References Cited', and explore from there.
After 17 years from its publication in the Official
Gazette, a patent falls into the 'public domain',the
inventor loses all property rights over their idea. There
is no longer any economic or legal incentive to defend
the patent. Contacting the inventors of expired patents
would perhaps be very helpful to readers wanting to
improve the design discussed here. The address of an
inventor can be obtained through the US Patent Office.
Construction plans for the Covey patent will be fully
described in a future issue of Tesla.