Acetone=better MPG

oneeyeddick · Post by **oneeyeddick** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 8:22 am

I might be confused, will have to check that again.

knowmad · Post by **knowmad** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 12:49 pm

hey OED!
after doing my home work on the Water injection (thanks Yig!) Me thinks that the modification you found on the Motor home may be ment for a water injection system just using the existing overflow/coolant res. that was labeled glycol?
ala,

And after reading through this article I am giving serious thought to implementing this on Betsy Duck (bus). And to prevent further tread drift I'll go post up in Elliot's Bus thread about this.

Kinetik V · Post by **Kinetik V** » Sat Jan 15, 2011 6:17 pm

Water injection...works but under the right circumstances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_inje ... engines%29

Hopefully the link will work.

Captain Goddammit · Post by **Captain Goddammit** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 8:35 am

Water injection is for controlling detonation.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 8:37 am

Captain Goddammit wrote:Water injection is for controlling detonation.

yeah, didn't it allow, in the planes anyway, to advance the timing and increase boost and fuel load, for emergency speed?

Kinetik V · Post by **Kinetik V** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 10:18 am

I guess that link of mine didn't work as it specifically covers it's use in aircraft....or my link wasn't read.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 12:13 pm

nope, your link works fine.
I rarely click on links.
and rarely post them.
my preference is to put it right there. and read, same.

I was just working from memory.

Kinetik V · Post by **Kinetik V** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 1:30 pm

ygmir wrote:nope, your link works fine.
I rarely click on links.
and rarely post them.
my preference is to put it right there. and read, same.

I was just working from memory.

Good to know...I'll adjust my approach accordingly.

The first time I saw anyone using water injection was with an Allison aircraft engine during a tractor pull. I was listening to the guy talk about injecting water and I thought he was nuts...I was thinking it would create a hydrolock condition and I was imagining expensive parts breaking as a piston can't compress water. Turns out it does make a difference..but again that's one of those rare circumstances anymore where it's got a practical use.

FIGJAM · Post by **FIGJAM** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 2:06 pm

I ment to put a question mark in the title of this thread, so I was just asking.

Now let's make the thread about any thoughts on improving MPG!

GO!

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 9:16 pm

I have been waiting for them to use turpentine for fuel. There was an engine that used diesel/turpentine mix, switching to pure turpentine once up to speed or something like that. Completely renewable.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 9:44 pm

my army trucks are "multi-fuel", so, I'm told will run on anything that is liquid and flammable.
They prefer diesel, but, will run anything that will flow through the system (viscosity wise).

FIGJAM · Post by **FIGJAM** » Sun Jan 16, 2011 9:55 pm

[youtube][/youtube]

Runs on saw dust?

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:04 am

pretty cool. And, makes sense.
IIRC, the original diesel (compression ignition) engine was made to run on coal dust.

FIGJAM · Post by **FIGJAM** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:17 am

Same thing in solar.

[youtube][/youtube]

FIGJAM · Post by **FIGJAM** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:40 am

One more, with wood.

[youtube][/youtube]

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 6:43 am

those are cool, for sure.
I also like the "producer gas" generators for fueling.
awkward, but interesting, in that they can use such a variety of materials to make the "gas".

TomServo · Post by **TomServo** » Mon Jan 17, 2011 7:04 am

[youtube][/youtube]

The CO · Post by **The CO** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 10:47 am

geekster wrote:... turpentine for fuel.... ...Completely renewable.

Renewable as in comes from a tree, yes... take a look at the process to manufacture it...

One of the Japanese car companies, (Honda I think) experimented with turp as motorcycle fuel after WWII, due to scarcity of petroleum @ the time. Seems to me if it was an awesome fuel, they would have continued doing so.

ygmr wrote: IIRC, the original diesel (compression ignition) engine was made to run on coal dust.

I'll go ahead and say no on that one. It was always designed around liquid fuels. But Rudolph Diesel was a smart one. Proved you didn't need a spark plug to make an I.C.E. run, and that you could use a variety of fuels in his engine design.

knowmad · Post by **knowmad** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:01 am

Kinetic V wrote:I guess that link of mine didn't work as it specifically covers it's use in aircraft....or my link wasn't read.

No we read the link. especially the parts that didn't have to do with aircraft engines, specificity the parts about application of the water-methanol injection being used on any engine application where RPM's are high, and extra power needed to force a timing advance; as in a Bus going up-hill.

My advice, Read the whole post. and when some people don't respond to everything one has written, one has probably been plonked.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 11:38 am

The CO wrote:
geekster wrote:... turpentine for fuel.... ...Completely renewable.
Renewable as in comes from a tree, yes... take a look at the process to manufacture it...

One of the Japanese car companies, (Honda I think) experimented with turp as motorcycle fuel after WWII, due to scarcity of petroleum @ the time. Seems to me if it was an awesome fuel, they would have continued doing so.

ygmr wrote: IIRC, the original diesel (compression ignition) engine was made to run on coal dust.
I'll go ahead and say no on that one. It was always designed around liquid fuels. But Rudolph Diesel was a smart one. Proved you didn't need a spark plug to make an I.C.E. run, and that you could use a variety of fuels in his engine design.

Pistonheads website:http://www.pistonheads.com/doc.asp?c=52&i=9773 wrote:Rudolf Diesel

Born in Paris of Bavarian parents, Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913) studied at Munich Polytechnic where he was an outstanding mechanical engineering student. He began his career as a refrigerator engineer. For ten years he worked on various heat engines, including a solar-powered air engine.

Backed by Baron von Krupp and Machinenfabrik Augsburg Nurnberg Company in Germany, he began experimenting with a high-pressure ammonia engine. In 1892 Rudolf Diesel was issued a patent for a proposed engine that air would be compressed so much that the temperature would far exceed the ignition temperature of the fuel. In other words, no spark would be needed to ignite te mixture.

His backers provided him with engineers to help him develop an engine that would burn coal dust -- at the time, there were mountains of useless coal dust piled up in the Ruhr valley.

Experimental engines

The first experimental engine was built in 1893 and used high pressure air to blast the coal dust into the combustion chamber. While the prototype blew its cylinder head off but, four years later, Diesel produced a reasonably reliable engine. His ideas for an engine where the combustion would be carried out within the cylinder were published in 1893, one year after he applied for his first patent.

Further developments using coal dust as fuel failed. A compression ignition engine that used oil as fuel was successful and a number of manufacturers were licensed to build similar engines.

The original oil burning engines used very crude mechanical injection equipment so Rudolf Diesel again began using air blast to provide fuel atomisation as well as turbulence for improved air-fuel mixing. It was very successful and was employed in Rudolf Diesel's third engine, built in 1895. An engine very similar to those in use today, it was a four-stroke cycle with 450psi compression.

capjbadger · Post by **capjbadger** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 4:51 pm

FIGJAM wrote:Same thing in solar.

[youtube][/youtube]

Damn you FIGJAM... now I have old ideas/designs around using stirlings and Peltiers (TECs) in some cooling, heating, and power generating systems keeping me up at night.

-Badger

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Tue Jan 18, 2011 7:31 pm

Something doesn't have to be a particularly good fuel to be used, it simply has to be efficient in the sense of BTU per dollar.

If we continue artificially inflating the price of mineral fuels, other fuels become economical. Turpentine might not have been economical enough 10 years ago but might be 10 years hence.

The CO · Post by **The CO** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 10:38 am

Ygmir, that's pretty cool. Never heard of a coal dust engine. It seems like getting the fuel to feed would be helluva trick. I think we're both wrong on 1st fuel, it does say in that snippet he began with with an ammonia engine. That would be a gas, rather than liquid or dust.

Geekster, spot on as far as economy. I think Ethanol & BioDiesel would still work out cheaper that turp as a fuel at this point. Brazil has a large chunk of vehicle running on biofuels, but I don't think turpentine is one of them.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Wed Jan 19, 2011 11:22 am

The CO wrote:Ygmir, that's pretty cool. Never heard of a coal dust engine. It seems like getting the fuel to feed would be helluva trick. I think we're both wrong on 1st fuel, it does say in that snippet he began with with an ammonia engine. That would be a gas, rather than liquid or dust.

.

yeah, cool concept.

the way I read it, he got a patent for the ammonia engine, but, didn't build one. The first actual one he built was the coal dust one.
But, I have been known to read things wrong.
Yeah, feeding the fuel seems problematic for that. He used a compressed air blast, IIRC.