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Originally Posted by Stevo12886
Schwa,
you bring up a good point about the cooling power of water when put into the combustion equation. This could be very useful in lean burn situations were the large amounts of Nox are produced due to the high heat, plus maybe a power gain from it?
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There is another problem with superheating steam though... It has a tendency to react with steel, essentially causing it to burn. It's a rapid oxidation and this effect reduces the thermal efficiency of power plants because of the reduction in maximum temperature possible in order to avoid disintegration of the steel components (pipes etc) in the system. I saw a demonstration of this effect performed in a lab using ordinary steam the steel wool was unaffected, but super-heating the steam with a burner heating the tube the steam was coming out of would cause the steel wool to glow and 'burn' rapidly when exposed to this high temperature gas.
That's why I say the whole engine would need to be re-designed in order to avoid damage of this kind if it were to use water in the combustion process. I would imagine this is the same reason why water injectors were never standard equipment on carburetor based vehicles, they probably tried it and discovered excessive premature wear on important components such as the piston rings and exhaust valves. Third party equipment manufacturers would not have been so concerned with this problem since their goal was just to sell the product, unrelated to the long term side-effects the engine would experience.
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