Next Big Future: Real Vaporware for Cars Would Enable Old and New Cars to Get 33% More Miles Per Gallon and Have Lower Emissions
roid
· 10 months ago
Beware - "Plans for a 200 mpg Fuel Vapourizer" have been purchasable from snakeoil salesmen for decades. Keep your wits about you when dealing with this subject.
GoatGuy
· 10 months ago
[Rhetorical thought experiment]
You're 12 years old. You're to water the garden. Mom had been using the wire-strainer to do some kitchen thing. You were asked to clean it with the hose. The hose has a pistol-grip on the end. You take the strainer, and spray the 80 psi water through the spray-grip, through the strainer. Lo' and behold! The water droplets are totally atomized, broken up into a fog.
the 12 year old mind, that might understand that the venturi in a carbeurator breaks up the liquid gasoline into a fog, into the stream of air passing by it ... thinks, "amazing! if a screen breaks up the water from the hose, maybe a screen can break up the gasoline in the manifold, making it more readily combustible."
It makes sense, doesn't it? Straight forward mule-sense.
The problem is, the 'theory" rests on the premise that a more finely divided gasoline-in-air fog will burn "better"... but where is the thermodynamic support for that? We forget that the intracicies of thermodynamics were worked out, after hundreds of years of experimentation, "only" a few dozen decades ago. OK, does atomization work?
YES! It works IF and ONLY IF the test engine, at the tested rate of combustion, is so abysmally inefficient that its venturi and/or fuel injection system completely insufficiently breaks up the stream of gasoline or fuel into droplets sufficiently small to completely combust in the raised pressure cylinder space. But that is rarely the issue.
What about the markedly higher inlet combustion gasses? The only thing that they do - provided that the thermal input was derived from recycling the exhaust gas stream, is to "contain" the heat of combustion in the chamber, leading directly to premature ignition and a great LOSS of power.
The point is, in general, all such atomization / heat-recycling mechanisms don't do anything to increase "mileage" but rather invest a lot of "the 12 year old stultified mind" in a useless exercise of Obvious Man's Improvements.
The only thing at all that will reasonably make engines "better" isn't going to be better gasoline atomization. it will come from retaining heat in the cylinder, not transmitting it through the cylinder head and walls, and by running the engine at the optimal speed determined by friction and heat-transfer where the most motive energy-per-unit-fuel is being produced. All the rest of the pseudotechnology crap that "improves" things to the '200 mpg" level ... is just poppycock.
Just check out (by googleing) "advanced cylinder downstroke" or "compound stroke engine", as well as the gazillion "inventions" along the lines of the aforementioned article.
PS: if any company, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American, French, German, Italian or Russian ... EVER figured out how to make an engine that could deliver 15 kW (motive) at near-theoretical thermodynamic efficiency ... which not coincidentally is near 150 mile per gallong ... then they would have done so a LONG time ago. We need no conspiracies to figure out why there are no products on the market.
Simple.
Thermodynamic constraints have kept such "super" engines from being manufactured ... within the constraints imposed by real-world materials, real-world safety, real-world trade-offs in weight, cost, complexity and reliability ... and mileage.
GoatGuy
GoatGuy.
nextbigfuture
· 10 months ago
Nothing in their site about 200 mpg. They had independent test on Ford F150 and increased mileage 30%.
GoatGuy
· 10 months ago
NBF ... I was riffing off the first poster's commentary ... which recalls the 50+ years of balderdash and flimflammery associated with these kind of claims. Next up, Brown's Gas, shall we? Remember, except for the lack of funding, it is claimed to increase gas mileage from at least 20% to upwards of 200%.
Of course, the thermodynamics doesn't work out. But if one conveniently discounts the "test vehicle" being originally in abominable shape ... weeeeellll ... yes, one could conceivably improve its mileage by 200% - simply by getting it back in tune, replacing its lousy oil, and adjusting the timing to 3 degrees before-top-dead-center at the test-track average RPM.
But I take your point - this company is only claiming 33%, or 1/3 more mileage.
Recycling heat might give back 10% - at the expense of higher cylinder-head and piston-head temps (and therein, faster oil breakdown, lower top-power delivery, increased predetonation, decreased head-gasket life, increased scale and 'varnish' buildup) - but the other 23%? I'm likely to give into the "Freshly Tuned Effect". Take a vehicle that has been running for even a week or two since its last tune, carefully measure mileage, then retune the car - FOR mileage. Voila ... 20% better mileage is seen off the bat. Sometimes the results are just short of incredible.
I was an avid "MPG" measurer 20 years ago. The BMW was something of a gas-hog, getting only 15-16 MPG for most of its between-tunings mileage. I once asked the very astute and well trained mechanic, "Hey Ted, can you tune it for mileage instead of performance this time?" For the next week, it was easily getting 23 MPG. No special driving, just the regular commute. Then, after the 2nd fill-up, it rapidly sloped back to 15-16 MPG as all the little adjustments to cams and coils (i.e. whatever mechanics adjust) reverted back to their comfortable ruts. Just for grins, I asked Ted a year later to "do the mileage thing" again. He did, and again, the car jumped to 22 MPG. And reverted back in a couple of weeks to 16 MPG.
That's the point.
GoatGuy
oggelbe
· 10 months ago
The fuel injection hardware in your average daily driver is due for a upgrade. If they can bring about a tighter control of the stoicheiometry it would be more than possible to boost the mileage and cut down the emissions. Especially in the larger displacement engines. The only question is what's the long term reliability of the added hardware in that harsh under the hood environment. I wonder if they'll make one to fit my little VW?
cheshirenoir
· 10 months ago
This company has just been covered over at Daniel Rutter's amusingly named "How to Spot a Psychopath" http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2009/01/28/they-ne... This guy has been discrediting fuel scams for ages and this one has all the hallmarks, most noticeably their reliance on testing from California Environmental Engineering, who are apparently well known for endorsing all sorts of "magic" pills and filters.
All Comments
Keep your wits about you when dealing with this subject.
You're 12 years old. You're to water the garden. Mom had been using the wire-strainer to do some kitchen thing. You were asked to clean it with the hose. The hose has a pistol-grip on the end. You take the strainer, and spray the 80 psi water through the spray-grip, through the strainer. Lo' and behold! The water droplets are totally atomized, broken up into a fog.
the 12 year old mind, that might understand that the venturi in a carbeurator breaks up the liquid gasoline into a fog, into the stream of air passing by it ... thinks, "amazing! if a screen breaks up the water from the hose, maybe a screen can break up the gasoline in the manifold, making it more readily combustible."
It makes sense, doesn't it? Straight forward mule-sense.
The problem is, the 'theory" rests on the premise that a more finely divided gasoline-in-air fog will burn "better"... but where is the thermodynamic support for that? We forget that the intracicies of thermodynamics were worked out, after hundreds of years of experimentation, "only" a few dozen decades ago. OK, does atomization work?
YES! It works IF and ONLY IF the test engine, at the tested rate of combustion, is so abysmally inefficient that its venturi and/or fuel injection system completely insufficiently breaks up the stream of gasoline or fuel into droplets sufficiently small to completely combust in the raised pressure cylinder space. But that is rarely the issue.
What about the markedly higher inlet combustion gasses? The only thing that they do - provided that the thermal input was derived from recycling the exhaust gas stream, is to "contain" the heat of combustion in the chamber, leading directly to premature ignition and a great LOSS of power.
The point is, in general, all such atomization / heat-recycling mechanisms don't do anything to increase "mileage" but rather invest a lot of "the 12 year old stultified mind" in a useless exercise of Obvious Man's Improvements.
The only thing at all that will reasonably make engines "better" isn't going to be better gasoline atomization. it will come from retaining heat in the cylinder, not transmitting it through the cylinder head and walls, and by running the engine at the optimal speed determined by friction and heat-transfer where the most motive energy-per-unit-fuel is being produced. All the rest of the pseudotechnology crap that "improves" things to the '200 mpg" level ... is just poppycock.
Just check out (by googleing) "advanced cylinder downstroke" or "compound stroke engine", as well as the gazillion "inventions" along the lines of the aforementioned article.
PS: if any company, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, American, French, German, Italian or Russian ... EVER figured out how to make an engine that could deliver 15 kW (motive) at near-theoretical thermodynamic efficiency ... which not coincidentally is near 150 mile per gallong ... then they would have done so a LONG time ago. We need no conspiracies to figure out why there are no products on the market.
Simple.
Thermodynamic constraints have kept such "super" engines from being manufactured ... within the constraints imposed by real-world materials, real-world safety, real-world trade-offs in weight, cost, complexity and reliability ... and mileage.
GoatGuy
GoatGuy.
Of course, the thermodynamics doesn't work out. But if one conveniently discounts the "test vehicle" being originally in abominable shape ... weeeeellll ... yes, one could conceivably improve its mileage by 200% - simply by getting it back in tune, replacing its lousy oil, and adjusting the timing to 3 degrees before-top-dead-center at the test-track average RPM.
But I take your point - this company is only claiming 33%, or 1/3 more mileage.
Recycling heat might give back 10% - at the expense of higher cylinder-head and piston-head temps (and therein, faster oil breakdown, lower top-power delivery, increased predetonation, decreased head-gasket life, increased scale and 'varnish' buildup) - but the other 23%? I'm likely to give into the "Freshly Tuned Effect". Take a vehicle that has been running for even a week or two since its last tune, carefully measure mileage, then retune the car - FOR mileage. Voila ... 20% better mileage is seen off the bat. Sometimes the results are just short of incredible.
I was an avid "MPG" measurer 20 years ago. The BMW was something of a gas-hog, getting only 15-16 MPG for most of its between-tunings mileage. I once asked the very astute and well trained mechanic, "Hey Ted, can you tune it for mileage instead of performance this time?" For the next week, it was easily getting 23 MPG. No special driving, just the regular commute. Then, after the 2nd fill-up, it rapidly sloped back to 15-16 MPG as all the little adjustments to cams and coils (i.e. whatever mechanics adjust) reverted back to their comfortable ruts. Just for grins, I asked Ted a year later to "do the mileage thing" again. He did, and again, the car jumped to 22 MPG. And reverted back in a couple of weeks to 16 MPG.
That's the point.
GoatGuy
http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2009/01/28/they-ne...
This guy has been discrediting fuel scams for ages and this one has all the hallmarks, most noticeably their reliance on testing from California Environmental Engineering, who are apparently well known for endorsing all sorts of "magic" pills and filters.