OK As I never planed on PROVING these things all I can do is paste in notes I have collected.
First:
From
Engine efficiency - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gasoline (petrol) engines
Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of about 25% to 30% when used to power a car. In other words, even when the engine is operating at its point of maximum thermal efficiency, of the total heat energy released by the gasoline consumed, about 70-75% is rejected as heat without being turned into useful work, i.e. turning the crankshaft.[1] Approximately half of this rejected heat is carried away by the exhaust gases, and half passes through the cylinder walls or cylinder head into the engine cooling system, and is passed to the atmosphere via the cooling system radiator.[2] Some of the work generated is also lost as friction, noise, air turbulence, and work used to turn engine equipment and appliances such as water and oil pumps and the electrical generator, leaving only about 25-30% of the energy released by the fuel consumed available to move the vehicle.
There is more there, I grabbed the main point...
The rest are notes with out the source:
This will be my last post on this group. I have been running a Mighty Mite booster and water injection for the past two years, and have two years of documentation showing a 116.8% increase in mileage on a 4.0 liter Ford Engine. The combination of the two produce amazing results with the right electronics.
Cannot show were these cam from...
Some bad news:
The Truth About Vapor Fuel
Like many others, we have heard stories of vapor systems that achieved incredible mileage. We have spent the last seven years, and a great deal of our client’s money, to determine what actual benefit, if any, there is to fuel vapor technology.
We found that fully vaporizing fuel prior to entering the combustion chamber is beneficial in several ways including a more homogenous fuel-air mix and a faster flame speed. Both of those proved to be very important when we were in a lean-burn condition. We were able to safely run a standard V-8 engine on fuel vapor at air to fuel ratios up to 28-1 rather than the standard 14.7-1.
The impact of lean-burn combustion on fuel economy is well documented. Several of the major automakers experimented with lean-burn during the nineties and into this century. There are credible reports of as much as a 50% increase in fuel economy. We were also able to demonstrate the same benefit using a vapor fuel system in a lean-burn mode.
So what happened to that technology? The inability of current catalytic converters (CATS) to remove Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) from the exhaust has prevented its use. It seems the CATS work fine at the normal air to fuel ratio but cannot remove NOx in a lean condition. A great deal of time and money has been spent in the last decade, on a variety of theories, attempting to solve the NOx issue.
Although we, and much of the automotive world, found the best fuel economy is achieved at an air to fuel ratio of about 20-1 the NOx levels decreased to acceptable levels at about 28-1. The fuel vapor system allowed us to run that lean without requiring the complicated and expensive engine modifications of the direct injection systems. The problem everyone seems to have experienced was a significant loss of power during that extreme lean condition. A more efficient combustion was needed if any of the benefit of lean-burn was to be realized.
Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) and Autoignition are two of the most touted current technologies that may fit the bill. General Motors and Ford have both announced plans to produce vehicles that will utilize HCCI technology. We agree but this is where we have taken a different approach. It appears the rest of the auto industry has approached HCCI and Autoignition as extensions of the lean-burn effort, but we have not.
The HCCI efforts of others appear to still be based on diluting the amount of fuel used by supplying more air to the charge resulting in a lean fuel to air condition. The greatly improved efficiency of the HCCI combustion allows their technology to work at higher air to fuel ratios where NOx is not as much an issue but not without sacrificing power. Automakers are reporting their HCCI operation will be used at light loads and lower speeds. They are further predicting an improvement in fuel economy of between 15 and 30%.
Vapor Fuel Technologies, LLC (VFT) has a system that utilizes the benefit of HCCI type combustion without creating the NOx problem. Vaporizing the fuel and mixing with heated air prior to entering the combustion chamber accomplish the dilution of the fuel air charge. This process accomplishes the dilution by thermal expansion rather than adding air. The heated air and vaporized fuel simply occupy more space, per pound, within the combustion chamber.
Dilution by thermal expansion allows the VFT System to operate at the standard, 14.7-1, air to fuel ratio allowing the catalytic converter to work correctly. The heating process also creates the conditions for a spark initiated autoignition combustion. As the fuel air charge is compressed it approaches the point of autoignition. When the spark plug ignites, the in-cylinder pressure and temperature rapidly increases. The homogeneous vapor mixture rapidly combusts in a series of autoignition events.
The result of the technology is an independently verified increase of over 30% in fuel economy. An EPA recognized and California Air Resources Board (CARB) certified laboratory ran a series of tests and has verified the fuel economy improvement.
As for the original question about any real improvement due to vaporizing fuel, we have not discovered any 200mpg carburetors but there are proven benefits
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Ok, When Pogue built his vaporized carb, oil companies distilled gas so it consisted of mostly short chain hydrocarbon molecules and was known as well head gas. These light hydrocarbons vaporized easily, lending to the high mileage that he acchieved. Ogle who got 100 mpg also used well head gas.
Shortly after Pogue went public with his carb, the oil companies decided it was necessary to begin refining the gas thru catalytic cracking, plus the addition of lead to the gas( I suspect) led to the failure of vaporized carbs as when the gas vaporized the lead would be left to coat the heat exchanging surfaces of the carb, and effectively insulate them.
Gas now is comprised of over 4000 hydrocarbon chain lengths; each becoming gaseous at a different temperature. There are also additives that vaporize at over 1000 degrees, that like lead did , will coat heat exchanging surfaces, and insulate them over time , rendering the vaporizer ineffective.
There was one class of college students that replicated the Ogle system and it did perform as his did at first. Eventually the system failed and they also found that they couldn't add any new fuel to the system. Upon removal of the gas tank they realized that it was filled with sludge and corrosive heavy end hydrocarbons that had not vaporized while they were driving.
This and the fact that there are more then 26 different blends of gas across the country that would have to be compensated for, explains a good part of why the catalytic converter was made mandatory on every new car produced. Unless one is willing to gamble with a device that produces under the hood temps of 1500 degrees before combustion, there is not much chance of fully vaporizing and cracking the fuel to produce high mileage.
Those that had intial sucess with their cat crackers and got 70-100+mpg have stated that the end resulting gas that was actually burned for power had the consistancy of methane.
Commits?? Answers??
RichThere is never enought time for me to do what I want to do.racprops
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On HHO:
Sorry for this long post, but I thought I should give a little more info on the science that takes place. I don't think I have posted this information on this site before, but it is the result of years of testing and dyno results.
When adding stoichiometric H2 and O2, it is the reactivity of the applied boost gases, and how sensors react, that will determine how an engine ECU will respond. This is why a high quality hydroxy gas with a very high percentage of orthohydrogen will produce a much greater combustion improvement, than higher volumes of a lesser quality hydroxy gas. It is this reactivity that performs the useful work on the fuel charge, not the raw BTU content of the boost gases. When the boost gases are low in reactivity, then little gains are seen in combustion, and the ECU response to those boost gases is usually not favorable. This accounts for why some booster designs perform so much better than others, liter for liter.
Adding H2 alone, or H2 with much less than stoichiometric O2, will cause a leaning effect because it consumes some of the oxygen that the fuel would normally be consuming. The ECU then leans out the engine a little, at the expense of some horsepower. Despite the percentages being numerically low as compared to the total intake air charge, they do have a measurable effect. This has been measured on a dyno.
Just ask dzup1234 of HH2 what improvement on horsepower was had by re-introducing the seperated oxygen at another point in the intake airstream.
I guess the point I am trying to get across is this... unless the electrodes are of a good quality grade of stainless steel that have been crosshatch sanded properly, cleansed properly to remove the iron and excess chromium from the surface, conditioned to build up the catalytic layers, and operated at recommended specifications, then the hydroxy gas produced will be of low reactivity. Good quality hydroxy gas does not take a lot of energy to produce, it takes good booster design, construction, and proper operating practices. This is not to say that other metals cannot be used, as nickel/molybdenum electrodes would be most ideal. But most of us cannot afford the cost of exotic materials, so we have to make do with the next best thing... stainless steel, preferrable 316L or 317L.
Remember, chromium oxide is a catalyst that converts orthohydrogen to parahydrogen quite efficiently, releasing 6 joules of energy as heat per gram of H2 converted. We want to get rid of as much iron and chromium as possible from the surfaces during the intense cleansing phase, and leave as much nickel and molybdenum as possible for catalytic operation. We want a booster that runs as cool as possible, and uses as little power as possible, while performing as desired.
Bob
Hint: the heat and percentage of iron release during the intense cleansing process is so much higher concentration than that required to convert any Cr6+ released to Cr3+. Where is all of this dangerous hexavalent chromium supposed to be coming from? Laboratory analysis of the cleanse fluid shows high levels of Cr3+ and no measurable levels of Cr6+. Despite this, the cleanse fluid is sub-micron filtered and re-used.
Some folks at Shell Oil Co. wrote "Fuel Economy of the Gasoline Engine" (ISBN 0-470-99132-1); it was published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, in 1977. On page 42 Shell Oil quotes the President of General Motorshe, in 1929, predicted 80 MPG by 1939. Between pages 221 and 223 Shell writes of their achievements: 49.73 MPG around 1939; 149.95 MPG with a 1947 Studebaker in 1949; 244.35 MPG with a 1959 Fiat 600 in 1968; 376.59 MPG with a 1959 Opel in 1973. The Library of Congress (LOC), in September 1990, did not have a copy of this book. It was missing from the files. I bought my copy from Maryland Book Exchange around 1980 after a professor informed me that it was used as an engineering text at the University of West Virginia. VPI published a papaer. March 1979, concerning maximum achievable fuel economy. This paper has several charts illustrating achievable and impossible fuel economy. About 1980 I contacted the author concerning conflicts between the paper and documented achieved "impossible" mpg. The author said, "I will get back to you.". I am still waiting for his response
HHO Again:
Let's make a few assumptions:
* You are discussing a gasoline (petrol) fueled engine.
* Gasoline has ABOUT 34 or 35 MJ/L (see
Energy density - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for one reference.
* Let's assume you get 3.5 miles per liter
From the above, we find we need 10 MJ/mile to run your vehicle (pretty
simple to figure that out.)
More assumptions:
* Hydrogen has 0.01005 MJ/liter at room temperature and 1 atmosphere
(op cit -- see the previous reference.)
* The same amount of energy will be needed on hydrogen as gasoline per
mile.
From the above 10 MJ/mile, we get around 995 liters per mile, at 60 MPH
that is 995 LPM (at 1 mile per minute.)
However, hydrogen may be more efficient and hydroxy has less energy but
more power per liter (sounds silly, but look at where the values come
from, power is the rate of energy release, A hand grenade has more power
than the entire fuel supply of a cargo ship, but the cargo ship fuel
contains much more energy.)
So you might get away with less hydrogen or hydroxy, which makes 300 LPM
a very easy number to believe.
Do the math based on your vehicle and you will get different (but
similar) numbers.
Hydroxy boosters and water injection on heavily loaded engines have been
shown to give great gains. Hydroxy gives 20% with simplistic systems
(as MANY here will tell you), more complex systems should be able to do
better.
Water injection running from the fuel injector signal has been used on a
Ford Mustang with great results when towing or drag racing. It greatly
increased power and reduced fuel usage. During WWII, water and
water/methanol/ether mixture injection was a common way to get more
power for takeoffs and emergencies. It saved lives BUT it ate engines.
Engine rebuilds are cheaper than new aircraft.
Nitrous oxide is injected in vehicles for more power, it cools the
incoming charge and adds oxidizer. It does not improve fuel economy.
Cooler inlet charge equals more power, adding hydroxy which is too hot
is going to reduce the fuel economy. Ask why intercoolers are such a
big win.
Dave 8{)
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