Heated tip fuel injectors, Delphi makes em!

[Frank Lee]

I'm thinking they're only heated when cold even though I saw no mention of it. My engines run good on E85 in brutal cold after they are warm. Plus it's quite a small mass on that tip with not huge quantities of fuel to heat so wattage is probably not bad.

[mechman600]

If they did shoot flames you wouldn't have to install a WAI.

[Fat Charlie]

Afterburner mod.

[solarguy]

It's not as big an energy investment as it sounds. The fuel is -going- to get heated. You are -going- to spend the energy to heat the fuel. The engine won't run otherwise.

But with this system, the fuel gets preheated electrically, and less energy in the combustion chamber gets wasted to heat the fuel.

Now, granted, heating the fuel electrically does involve some conversion inefficiencies. It would take some careful long term testing to see how much you really save, net.

[rmay635703]

Guys I think you are missing the point during WARMUP and ENGINE START things are EXTREMELY inefficient and in the case of ethanol (hydrous as well) you can't start at all.

To heat 1 gallon/hr of water 410 degrees takes about 1000 watts continous or about 1 1/3 hp.

So on a big V8 that is how much power would be needed to achieve this but again this would only be during warmup and given many vehicles use 2x - 3x more fuel during warmup (at least at idle) this may not be a bad investment even on non-e85 vehicles.

Heck idle consumption is all waste and that is where this would likely make things a WHOLE lot better.

Especially for the non hypermilers who insist on warming their car up 15-30 minutes.

Cheers
Ryan

[beatr911]

If it significantly eliminates the need for cold enrichment, will there be an injector into the exhaust to light off the cat? I know that sounds dumb, but OEM mapping dumps a ton of fuel, above what the engine needs to run, to get the cat lit on cold start now.

It will be interesting to see if these are used in non-flexfuel gasoline engines from OEM's. Maybe they only mention ethanol fuel because it's just not hot enough to make a difference for a gasoline engine. Or not hot enough when the engine is warm. Or the heating element isn't capable of continuous duty.

Maybe that's what we are here for.

The claim for the supercritical temp injector (Transonic) sounds like it has promise though.

Transonic Supercritical Fuel Injection – Improves Efficiency 50 to 75 Percent

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by beatr911

If it significantly eliminates the need for cold enrichment, will there be an injector into the exhaust to light off the cat?

Blasphemy on a small car with this system why would you need a cat?

erm in any event if you were to use this to lean out idle especially during cold start the fuel would make much more heat than normal due to being around stoich (or leaner still ?), the heat of exhaust can light off the cat just as well as too much or too little fuel.

Too much fuel no matter how you slice it makes more pollution, we shouldn't concern ourselves with the type of pollution just that less fuel is always less pollution by volume (aka Co2 and volatiles)

Cheers
Ryan

[beatr911]

As an ecomodder, I think you are right on!

As much as I like clean air, I also believe in just plain burning less fuel. It's too bad we don't have the readily accessible and reasonably priced ability to trim excess fuel from our EFI mappings. Areas in cold start, transitions, WOT and decel are often richer than they need to be just to satisfy hydrocarbon emissions. Really probably any operating regime in open loop is too rich. Decel on my Focus doesn't cut fuel unless I'm over like 3000 rpm. I rarely even run it over 3000 rpm.

If these, and maybe other areas were optimized for fuel efficiency (with emissions be damned!) I wonder what MPG gains could be realized.

If supercritical injectors created a much more complete and therefore cleaner burn the cats could conceivably not have enough fuel to stay lit. Would the supercritical injector burn be clean enough to render the cats redundant? I guess we may see someday, or we may not by thier absence from the market.

[adam728]

I think you guys are only looking at hydrocarbons as the pollution/emissions. Hydrocarbons are easy, its NOx emissions that are tough to meet, do plenty of harm, and leaner is not better for them. There's no way you are eliminating catalysts and meeting modern vehicle emissions, I don't care what fuel prep is done.

Also, spark timing aids a great deal in lighting off a cold cat, not just running rich. Many cars will pull timing to well after tdc on startup to get still burning combustion gases into the exhaust. Cat light off can happen in seconds this way. Longer means much, much higher hydrocarbon emissions.

[user removed]

Since the beginning of emissions controls going back 50 years, I ahve always felt that the solution was to perfect the delivery of the fuel-air mixture to an engine optimized for creating the highest amount of power per unit of fuel.

In 1976 the Datsun 280Z, with a fuel injection system considerd archaic by todays standards passed federal emissions without a catalytic converter, or any exhaust gas recirculation. Honda managed that without a catalyst.

Few people remember how poor driveability was in that era and power levels suffered, but Honda and Nissan managed to maintain driveability while passing then current emissions requirements.

It was sad to see lean burn die due to NOX regulations while producing CO2 levels that matched current hydrids.

I still believe there is a lot of room for improvements in IC engines, approaching the 60% energy conversion theoretical maximum. I think that level may even be passed with the elimination of the reciprocating limitation or current IC designs.

regards
mech