water injection theory

[Anonymous]

ok, so since water splits into hydrogen and oxygen, and nitrous splits into oxygen and something else (we need the oxygen), can it be thought that a full fledged fuel injected engine that has fine misted water injection set up, would have a slight boost? i mean once the extra oxygen is there and the engine runs "leaner" the computer would compensate by correcting the ratio and spray more fuel? also the hydrogen would help right? please pm me about this i am an ex-auto machinist student and i am (probably) crazy. lol it sounds right though.
thanks

 

[XFlow_Fairlane]

whater does not break down into oxygen and hydrogen when burned in an engine. the benifits of water injection is the cooling effect from the water on the incoming air

 

[Anonymous]

Water also expands when heated, adding additional power. With enough heat applied, water can expand as much as 1200 times, in volume. I'm not suggesting it expands this much in our engines.

 

[Anonymous]

one way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is through electrolysis which is very easy to do, and then you can "inject" the hydrogen into the engine for a boost in power and better mileage, im currently trying to do this but since im in school its going very slowly, if ur interested pm me ill explain my ideas...
Sean

 

[rbohm]

8) water injection works by putting a bit of water into the combustion chamber. the reason it works is because the combustion chamber temps will not rise above the temp of the water untill it has boiled off into steam. and byt he time it has done that, you are past the point where you run into detonation problems. the steam will also help keep the combustion chamber clean of carbon build up, and prevent future detonation problems.

 

[jamyers]

One thing people overlook is that an internal combustion engine works by heating and expanding material, which pushes on the piston. Except in full race engines, not all of the air is used for combustion, some is simply used for heating/expansion.

I'm no expert on it, but I understand that Nitrous Oxide injection makes more power mostly because the oxygen allows more fuel to be burned. The nitrogen (an inert gas) is something that will expand when heated, doing additional work. The nitrogen "leverages" the addional fuel/oxygen combustion. There's also usually a dramatic cooling effect as the N2O is injected, which is good (just don't run lean or it won't matter). Plus, N2O "comes apart" easier than water.

Water injection reduces detonation by lowering/delaying combustion temps, and does provide additional expansion material, but not enough to make dramatic power gains like nitrous. Water injection will clean (literally steam-clean) the chamber/pistons, but it can also erode them and severly damage pistons and aluminum heads. It's thought that this is because when bigger drops are flashing to steam, they shoot tiny still-liquid drops violently out. The solution seems to be really high-pressure (150-200psi) water injection to REALLY vaporize the water.

 

[Anonymous]

glad to see i'm not a total moron. lol. i did guess it would not be as significant a gain as say, nitrous, but i wonder what kind of difference it would make. you'd notice right? and i never really considered other benifits like the cleaning of pistons, valves, ect. wow. sounds like an idea.

 

[Anonymous]

JAMYERS has got it! 100% right on

one way to split water into hydrogen and oxygen is through electrolysis which is very easy to do,....... its going very slowly,

Wrong.....it is NOT EASY to do.

If you hook your engine to a big generator, and devote 100% of its power to make hydrogen and oxygen through elctrolysis, you would make enough fuel to run the engine for maybe 1 minute for every hour of generating run time. It isn't easy or others would be doing it!!!!

but i wonder what kind of difference it would make. you'd notice right?.

On a low compression engine you really wouldn't notice any difference,

On a high compression engine running low octane gas, you would see huge differences.

 

[Anonymous]

Ive been working on ways to do electrolysis outside of the car, then store it and inject it into the engine mixed with gasoline....I have seen videos of smaller 4 cylinders run on pure hydrogen for hours from about 12 cups of water. I may be wrong, of course, but I think that mixing it with gasoline it will work out.

 

[Anonymous]

....I have seen videos of smaller 4 cylinders run on pure hydrogen for hours from about 12 cups of water.

: : : I'd like to see that.....

 

[XFlow_Fairlane]

yeah that is possible but the energy it takes to split all that water is many times more than that you get out of it from burning.

 

[Anonymous]

yeah that is possible but the energy it takes to split all that water is many times more than that you get out of it from burning.

yep -if it was close it would be economical.

That's the reason we don't have more hydrogen powered vehicles - it takes too much energy to make the hydrogen.

Oil is "kind of" free - you pump it out of the ground and it is ready to use, or be refined.

If you have to burn coal or use Uranium to make enough electricity to make hydrogen from electrolysis is isn't cost effective.

 

[broncr]

Oil is "kind of" free - you pump it out of the ground and it is ready to use, or be refined.

The "finding costs", on the last well program were something like :

Rig with crew - ~$15,000/day ( these were "shallow" wells -only about a mile down). Water - thousands of gallons a day. Trucked in - no idea how much $$, but NOT cheap! Deisel - ~600 gallons/ day ( to run 4-6 large turbo diesel engines) ~ $1,500/day. Other professional services ( myself, but one) ~$6,000/day.

That's very simpified, but we're at $22.5K/day (avg 7-10 days per well),= ROUGHLY $200,000.00, JUST to DRILL THE WELL!!!


and that hasn't taken into account costs for leasing the land, or paying the salaries of the guys who decided where to drill, or for their offices, their equipment, their expenses, etc.. add more & more $$$.

Then you MIGHT make a well, or might not. "Dry hole" costs get figured into the costs of producers.

If you DO make a well, then comes a miriad of pumping, storing, moving/shipping, refining, & distributing costs, before it can go into your tank. I'm sure there are a few costs I haven't thought of - but I think you can begin to get the point...

Oh yeah, one other little thing - Environmental remediation- $$$$$$$.

No offence, but it's NOWHERE NEAR free!!!

edit: Dude, you're from Texas! Why am I esplainin this to YOU!

 

[Anonymous]

it's NOWHERE NEAR free!!!

You are correct ....... cost of production has really skyrocketed compared to rigs in the 60's and 70's.

Other energy sources are looking better all the time..
but hydrogen still has a long ways to go to catch up.

 

[Anonymous]

My all time fave has to be the gasifier setup, I've often thought it would be cool to drive into town with the old truck running on corn.

 

[Anonymous]

My all time fave has to be the gasifier setup, I've often thought it would be cool to drive into town with the old truck running on corn.

Mother Earth News had a Chevy stepside truck running on "wood gas" with a smoldering stove looking thing in the back.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree with jaymers on most of his post. But on this point I have to clarify:

... but it can also erode them and severly damage pistons and aluminum heads. It's thought that this is because when bigger drops are flashing to steam, they shoot tiny still-liquid drops violently out. The solution seems to be really high-pressure (150-200psi) water injection to REALLY vaporize the water.

This will only happen if you do not use distilled water. If you use distilled water then you don't have to worry about erosion. As far as atomizing the water check out McMaster Carr. They have many different spray heads that will atomize the water without going to huge pressures.

Another option for an injection medium is alcohol. It evaporates easily and will therefore remove more heat from the incoming air easier. It will also burn in the chambers and clean them similar to water. You can usually find De-Natured alcohol in large amounts at your local hardware store.

Small amounts of water will not have ANY appreciable affect on the assemblies within the engine - turbo dodge guys have been running water injection with little to NO atomization for thousands of miles with NO discernable signs of damage to the insides of the engine - this is of course when using distilled water (The erosion is actually caused by the impurities in most waters). Even guys injecting water onto their turbocharger impellors have seen little to no erosion over thousands of miles and hundreds of hours of water flow... I just fail to see any demonstrated example of damage due to water other than hydra-locking an engine...

Oh, and any errosion that might take place would be damaging the carbon and sludge build-up in most engines, it wouldn't get to the metals and assmblies, it'll mostly just steam-clean the combustion chambers and exhaust ports... intakes too if you use alcohol mixed with it and inject before the carb or throttle body...

 

[jamyers]

You're right, water erosion isn't that big a problem in 99.9% of street engines, the water erosion problems I was talking about usually show up in very high-performance engines, like nitrous motors with additional water injection. I should have clarified, didn't want to scare anybody away from it. Just something to be aware of as a possible threat.

Of course, the finer you can atomize it, the better.

And you're right about alcohol being better yet - several GM engines used a water/alcohol mix for more power / reduced detonation ('59 LeSabre concept car and the 215 turbo V8 are two)

 

[Anonymous]

oh i looked it up . i think water seperates into hydrogen and oxygen at around 800-900*, which is more than exeeded during combustion

 

[The Plankster Prankster]

oh i looked it up . i think water seperates into hydrogen and oxygen at around 800-900*, which is more than exeeded during combustion

i havent checked your numbers, but assuming thats true, it still wont do you any good. the second law of thermodynamics still remains: energy is neither created nor destroyed. therefore, the energy that splits the water is absorbed in the process, and released as soon as the H and O combine again (when the H burns). the energy used to split the water is equal to that which it releases, so that wont help our cause.