water injection, for better fuel economy?

[bobstad]

I've seen in advertisements, water injection systems from time to time-sold for giving a car far better gas mileage; though haven't known of anyone really using these, which used to be available through places like J. C. Whitney, and seemed to be a little on the flaky side of technology, and/or manufacture, etc.

These put water directly into the gasoline just before combustion; to say more accurately, in the fuel line before the carburetor if I'm not mistaken-rather than the intake manifold, though perhaps that would be the case as an alternative, if my memory isn't solid? Something of the sort.

Which I think is theoretically sound, if perhaps questionable enough in practice; though probably there hasn't been any great development of the technology, other than the aforementioned aftermarket applications.

I'm curious if anyone has more knowledge, experience or history of this? Probably something originated during the 1950s, is a guess? I'm wondering if similar to my toilet paper oil filter, this may be another thing with definite virtues shunned and discouraged by corporate culture greedy for profitability.

[sketchman]

Water injection will keep your CC cooler during combustion and so will also reduce NOX emissions. You could definitely use this ability to run more ignition timing safely and more compression as well. As in a turbo app. Same theory, but you could run less fuel, higher comp, and even greater increased ignition. Since you're not having to compensate for more O2 this should result in better fuel economy.

One study showed the optimum water amount to be 0.75 of fuel being used, causing both an increase in power and less NOX emissions. However I don't know if they were fooling with ignition too or just water injection. I would think the more ignition you give it the more water it would tolerate, to a point. So if you had say an EGT gauge and you had increased comp then increased the water injection as you increased ignition timing to the point that EGTs were close to stock, I think you'd find the optimum overall combo that way. Both power and fuel economy.

[bobstad]

One study showed the optimum water amount to be 0.75 of fuel being used

Meaning a water tank three quarters the size of the fuel tank?

The examples I've seen advertised, the water flow must've been far less; since water came from small under hood containers, I think operated due to vacuum pressure from the fuel line.

Seems like you are on top of far more of the parameters of the technology, than I'd of ever imagined; by a great leap. The potentials seem attractive, too...or is that the caffeine talking this morning?

I'm not capable of practical design; though have to imagine, working towards simplicity through imagination might yield something truly brilliant. For instance, a well thought out venturi effect might capably replace all sorts of mechanisms? Like jets in a carburetor, gravity versus pumping-with agricultural irrigation, or an effective rain dance versus cloud seeding with dry ice-even.

Probably the amounts of water optimal might change radically with conditions the engine is expected to perform under; is one thought. So, with fuel injection, even a complimentary water injection system just as sophisticated. Which is a far cry from the simple set-ups which used to be touted and sold as aftermarket add ons.

By the way, anyone with knowledge of the history of this sort of thing, and examples, too; is certainly welcome to pipe in. I wonder if anything is marketed currently? Also, what have been effective applications; in industry, for consumers, etc.

[bhearts]

All the leading water methanol injection companies have progressive controllers for NA cars. I wouldn't recommend 75 percent water compared to fuel unless you were running high compression. Taking all that heat out of the head will cause your combustion to be cooler and less potent. But... if you had higher compression you'd have higher heat head room and adding water could bring your egt back to stock levels. Which would be optimal. I'm currently working on a progressive water injection system for my aspire. I'll be heating the water and turning it into steam before combustion, as this in theory works better.

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[Larry Hampton]

No, he's talking 0.75%. A 1/10 of a gallon would be 1% of your fuel capacity so probably half a pint per tank would be more than enough.

What would be cool would be an injector mounted in the top of the manifold for each port that is sized much smaller and follow injector pulse to open and close. Maybe it would get its pulse from the previous cylinder? And an alcohol/water mixture to boot.

[bhearts]

That's an impossibly small immeasurable amount of fuel. 50 percent is quite doable.

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[bhearts]

Water I mean

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[sketchman]

It was a ratio. 0.75:1. Water to fuel, by mass.

This was done on an experimental engine where the size of the respective tanks in the real world didn't have to matter, and on relatively low compression of 8.5:1.

Also remember that gasoline weighs less than water. A quick google shows gas being 6.25lbs at 72 degrees F and water being 8.4lbs at around the same temp. So the difference would be less than it would seem looking at it from volume.

[bobstad]

All the leading water methanol injection companies have progressive controllers for NA cars. I wouldn't recommend 75 percent water compared to fuel unless you were running high compression. Taking all that heat out of the head will cause your combustion to be cooler and less potent. But... if you had higher compression you'd have higher heat head room and adding water could bring your egt back to stock levels. Which would be optimal. I'm currently working on a progressive water injection system for my aspire. I'll be heating the water and turning it into steam before combustion, as this in theory works better.

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Seems pretty slick; to be actually planning something like this. I'll probably miss the news if you post about the project; I'm so haphazardly at the website but, good luck.

I'm also trying to figure out what NA means other than Narcotics Anonymous or Native American; guessing "non aspirated" that I think typically designates a vehicle as fuel injected or not-though I have no idea which?

[sketchman]

Naturally Aspirated. Means not turbo or supercharged.

[bobstad]

No, he's talking 0.75%

I finally thought that through; which is hilarious, no? What a wicked system to create combustion via, is another thought...whatever floats, as they say.

[bobstad]

Naturally Aspirated. Means not turbo or supercharged.

Oh yeah; now I remember. Fuel injection or not didn't seem accurate; once I thought a little, either.

Sort of off topic; though since hospitalized over night just prior to Thanksgiving, I've noticed a significant loss of memory function often enough to wonder if they dosed me with something nasty? My very first hospitalization, for a gout type condition; though I noticed I freaked out an MD when mentioning my affliction qualifying me for SSDI/SSI is entirely due to physical disability.

I think the whole scenario a scandalous one wherein I'm victimized; definitely part of corruption and corrupt practices heavily stylized within the medical community. Since birth in my case, literally almost; since doctors told my Mom her milk would poison her children so I was never nursed, with very typical problems from that which is a fragrant lie that anyone's mother's milk can harm them.

With now nearly thirty years as a ward of the state; that's pretty strange if a person expects to live reasonably in spite of all the prevailing structures & strictures against that.

My first ever hospitalization; by the way.

I'm reminded of television ads now for oxygen assistance breathing apparatus; and which always has someone using one of those on a motorcycle, anyone might want on sections of road in any type of vehicle-where air pollution is overwhelming. Berkeley's city streets and the freeways there were commonly like that for me during the mid '90s; though I have two reasons besides being a little sedentary often times, to feel vulnerable to such a sensitivity.

One, was consistent exposure without breath or skin protection, to MEK working at Boeings four months following high school building interior panels for 747s; we used liberally to clean nearly everything, with lots of cotton rags. The other reason is the crappy rubber in the hatchback door seal of the '66 VW "square-back" sedan I had a dozen years and lived out of most of that time traveling about 100,000 miles from '82-'94.

I replaced the seal with a factory German one soon after I got the car, ignorant of superior aftermarket products which were much better and made of vinyl like materials; so soon the damned seal leaked as bad as before, and I was constantly breathing the car's exhaust as well as ambient pollution from the trailing air behind the car, too. YUCK. Lots & lots of MO2 in other words, if I've got the chemical symbol for carbon monoxide accurate?

[sketchman]

It was a ratio. 0.75:1. Water to fuel, by mass.

This was done on an experimental engine where the size of the respective tanks in the real world didn't have to matter, and on relatively low compression of 8.5:1.

Also remember that gasoline weighs less than water. A quick google shows gas being 6.25lbs at 72 degrees F and water being 8.4lbs at around the same temp. So the difference would be less than it would seem looking at it from volume.

Was supposed to be lbs/gallon. Woopsie.

[bobstad]

No, he's talking 0.75%. A 1/10 of a gallon would be 1% of your fuel capacity so probably half a pint per tank would be more than enough.

What would be cool would be an injector mounted in the top of the manifold for each port that is sized much smaller and follow injector pulse to open and close. Maybe it would get its pulse from the previous cylinder? And an alcohol/water mixture to boot.

Okay, I've given up trying to understand sketchman's ratio of pounds to gallons comment, in his most recent post correcting himself somehow: Though he's contrary to Larry Hampton here, and IS saying there'd be a huge amount of water involved. Right?

I've yet to get anyone commenting about those old water systems, which had been frequently touted in sales pitches when marketed during the '60s for sure; I'm guessing may've been originated commercially as aftermarket add ons during the '50s?

All the discussions seem heavily weighted towards more high-tech improvisations; even when aimed towards the street, as bheart's plans for an Aspire-which seem perhaps far fetched, like he may be pulling someone's leg a little...

I have an artist/musician friend who goes by Mayo who used to like to try to intellectually bully me a little, as a person accomplished in ways typically I can only dream of; though also a humanist enough we'd frequently associate together enjoyably-both in the outback near Northport, WA where we met, and in Berkeley where he'd often end up-as I'm guessing now a bay area native born fellow, both of us homeless "vehicular residents" there during the mid '90s.

For awhile he'd ridden a Sears FreeSpirit bicycle around the outback he'd added a tiny gasoline motor to; claiming he'd chosen the bike for the trade name, who is nothing if not a compulsive exhibitionist practically-like that line from the movie Lawrence of Arabia, spoken near the end about the protagonist. Thus, I'm willing to bet, as general society may go far apart from my own typical considerations; there are sometimes fairly esoteric reasons from my point of view some people are into Aspires and even Aspire related technology, as applied to Festivas?*

*Henry Ford goofed by labeling his rigs by letters, rather than numbers; if he'd expected them all to come only in basic black forever? I'm trying of the moment in my thoughts, to imagine a world with automobiles labeled by numbers only with an option of a decimal point in the mix-one only; as a fantasy, not for any specific purposes of this discussion: Say a little like the baseball related game Jack Keroauc invented; if a person wanted to create a whole system for identifying all the cars already produced, and/or in production, etcetera. Not me, for the foreseeable future; however.

[sketchman]

Spike built one of those old systems. He said it didn't help MPG.

And yes, that would be water injected 75% of the amount of gasoline being used. The lbs/gallon comment was supposed to show that since fuel injection is done by mass or in other words metered mathematically to get a chemically correct amount rather than going by volume, the injection of water ideally would be done the same way if you wanted to be super accurate, and so the water tank could be a good bit smaller than the gas tank. That's how the study I mentioned was done to find that 0.75:1 ratio. The point was that that's not 0.75 gallon water to 1 gallon gasoline. It's 0.75 grams/lbs/etc to 1 grams/lbs/etc.

So say you have a 10 gallon gas tank. That's (for sake of argument and not really perfectly accurate) 62.5lbs of gasoline. For a 0.75:1 ratio (again by weight not volume) you'd only need about 47lbs of water or a 5.6 gallon tank to do it.

My point was it's not as huge an "amount" by volume as it might seem.