Heated Fuel

[Gollum]

I know I'm bringing this back up from the dead, but I was looking up details on this subject again to see what all people have tried and it's almost scary how little info people are equipped with and how much "myth" there is around the topic.

Since I can't post a link with no post history do a google search for "Honda formula one turbo-charged V-6 1.5L engine" and the first result should be a PDF on K20A.org

There, now you all have 100% legitimate proof that increasing fuel temp increases BSFC (brake specific fuel consumption, or actual power created per volume of fuel for you non-hardcore gear heads).

The paper talks about intake temp and how it relates to BSFC, fuel temp and how it relates to BSFC, boost pressure and how it relates to BSFC, fuel mixture and how it relates to BSFC, I think you get the point.

Of course this is all based around THEIR engine, which though loosely based off of a production block at the time, is quite a "special" application. The physics should hold true though.

Heating fuel is a GOOD thing, and I recommend doing it RIGHT by adding a small copper "radiator" and sealing it up to pass hot coolant through, and then following the whole thing up with a solenoid and temp sensor so a controller can bypass the heater to maintain a specific temperature. If you don't get a predictable output temp going to the injectors then you're flying blind on tuning the thing, and that's the whole point of ecomodding, yes?

Anyhoo, just thought that PDF might help some of you. I've been a long time lurker and decided to finally create an account so maybe you'll be hearing from me again soon. ;-)

[forgottenmindset]

Good observation,

I agree with you, vaporization does increase usable energy. But in real world conditions, it may not work on just any car. There are other factors that were acknowledged to make this small increase viable. Also, you have to keep in mind the boiling point of the individual ingredients in the fuel, or you could have vapor lock possibly. Vapor carbs are a little mythical, but I've heard a story that it was once used in racing to increase either power of fuel efficiency, but again, it depends on the other engine operating factors. There's also the story of the guy from Arizona or Nevada(?) who made a vapor carb run on a big huge ford that got 100 miles per gallon. A newspaper did a story on it, but the guy magically vanished or died of personal problems supposedly (alcohol I think was the story), but you never know. He had some kind of magical black box that made it all work, but know one knew what it was since he died before anything came to fruition. He called it a filter though. The car was hard to start, but once it did it drove great apparently. The engine heated the small gas tank to a boil and the vapor was pulled into the motor as fuel, probably mixing with a highly secret a/f ration in his vapor carb and "filtered" with his little black box. But I think fuel was more potent back then, certainly less refined and with less additives (the 70s).

I wonder about this honda thing, I'm surprised they used it even though they said it wasn't a significant increase in fuel preservation (2%?). It does reduce power while decreasing fuel consumption to a point where it doesn't help any more (at 80 - 90 C)

It's amazing but I subscribed to this thread years ago. Just got a haunting email from the forum about it.

[101Volts]

That man was Tom Ogle, There's another thread on this forum about his system and he claimed to get 200 MPG with a custom built 3-gallon tank. I don't know much about car engines but I imagine the system he installed would at least make a car engine last longer, Vaporization aside; If I remember right it included diverting the radiator fluid to the gas tank area to heat the fuel which caused the engine to run cooler, If its true.

[user removed]

Charles Nelson Pogue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is one of the miracle carburetor, but you have to realize that most of the limitations of the IC engine will never be solved by better atomization.

Here is the one that interests me the most today.

Transonic Combustion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

regards
Mech

[user removed]

The purpose is to make the mixture completely vaporized and homogenous, which means every CC of combustion shamber area has the exact same percentage of air and fuel. The potential is to get an IC engine to 60% thermal efficiency as a peak BSFC measurement.

Higher than that requires rethinking every single loss source of which one significant one is reciprocation itself.

Google "Animated Engines Gnome" to see a piston in cylinder engine that does not reciprocate.

regards
Mech

[Air-Hybrid]

I came across an article some years back that laid out a very good description of why heating the fuel (especially petrol) is far less effective than heating the intake air to promote good atomisation (at least until DI gasoline came along).
I can't find the article now but the guy ended up with an intake layout that used three throttle bodies, where only the centre one did any carburetion and air entering it was pre-heated, whilst the other two TBs ran just ambient air (no fuel).
The principle went, that even very hot gasoline (he used exhaust heat iirc) will quickly re-condense in a cool air stream due to the mass of air having a far greater ability to absorb heat than the petrol could give up before it temp dropped to well below its condensation point, so the fuel droplets coagulated and went back to being poorly mixed.
*edit*I think his 'compromise' of running one heated, very rich carb and two cooler intakes was in an effort to ensure that the charge had got well past the heat of vapourisation point before it was 'mixed down' with fresh air.

[hungryhunter]

Originally Posted by metromizer

Didn't Jim Fueling or Smokey Yunick do some research on this back in the 1970's? Seems I saw pictures of a Vega or Pinto engine bay...

If I remember correctly, the article stated you need some pretty high temps, well over coolant temps of +200F, to realize any significant gains. Just repeating what I read, I'm pretty sure the system used exhaust manifold heat and a heat exchanger. Super-heated fuel sounds tough to manage, from a saftey perspective. But then again, so does internal combustion when compared to an 1600's cooking fire or 1800's steam boiler.

Damn, It's so funny because as I was reading down the thread I thought of that article. It was in Hot Rod I think. The one I read involved a Pontiac Fiero.
He said at the time that the problem with gasoline is that it is a mixture of many chemicals all with different vaporization rates. The separation that occured during just heating caused problems. I don't remember the specifics. What he came up with was a system to homogenize this heated mixture using a turbocharger turbine and an exhaust heated manifold box. He claimed super HP gains and 200 mpg or something like that. I'm going to google it and see if I can find it. I remember Hot Rod testing the car and confirming Smokey's claims. They predicted aftermarket kits for cars and then I never heard anything about it again.......................It a conspiracy I tell you

[hungryhunter]

Originally Posted by hungryhunter

Damn, It's so funny because as I was reading down the thread I thought of that article. It was in Hot Rod I think. The one I read involved a Pontiac Fiero.
He said at the time that the problem with gasoline is that it is a mixture of many chemicals all with different vaporization rates. The separation that occured during just heating caused problems. I don't remember the specifics. What he came up with was a system to homogenize this heated mixture using a turbocharger turbine and an exhaust heated manifold box. He claimed super HP gains and 200 mpg or something like that. I'm going to google it and see if I can find it. I remember Hot Rod testing the car and confirming Smokey's claims. They predicted aftermarket kits for cars and then I never heard anything about it again.......................It a conspiracy I tell you

OK, it wasn't 200 mpg, I was something like 12 whenI read it. Here's the car.
Smokey Yunick’s Hot Vapor Fiero; 51 mpg and 0-60 in less than 6 Seconds! See and hear it run in our exclusive VIDEO! : Legendary Collector Cars

[101Volts]

Originally Posted by hungryhunter

OK, it wasn't 200 mpg, I was something like 12 whenI read it. Here's the car.
Smokey Yunick’s Hot Vapor Fiero; 51 mpg and 0-60 in less than 6 Seconds! See and hear it run in our exclusive VIDEO! : Legendary Collector Cars

The link doesn't work.

(Edit: Shortly before I edited this on 2013-September-18 it worked.)

[hungryhunter]

Originally Posted by 101Volts

The link doesn't work.

That's odd. I just tried it and although a little slow in opening it worked.
Google it.