Re: 100 mpg claims for 80% water/20% gas mixture
One idea that I have heard recently as a possible way to use water to increase an engine's thermal efficiency is to run it as a 6-stroke engine: intake/compression/power/water injection/steam expansion. The water would be injected before the hot exhaust gases are released to generate an additional power stroke using steam inside the engine. This supposedly would eliminates the need for a radiator as the steam would act to cool the engine. Although that idea sounds somewhat interesting, I doubt they would be able to get such an engine to run reliably for a long time. The engine would also be terribly dirty due to running cooler, and there would be no possible way to run exhaust after-treatment. Finally, a lot of energy would be consumed to re-compress the exhaust gas, and inject the water.
A better idea for waste heat capture is BMWs idea using heat exchangers and a closed-loop steam engine, which can be built aroud a standard engine.
This proposed idea of "vaporizing the fuel using the exhaust with a reactor rod" sounds like nonsense, and as they didn't mention anything about generating steam power from the exhaust heat, I have no idea what the water is supposed to do in their system. Besides, even with a perfectly efficient engine (utterly impossible) it would still be exceedingly difficult to achieve 100mpg in a large SUV as they claim as it simply takes more work to move a big, unaerodynamic box than a small car.
Last edited by Double-Trinity : 08-19-2006 at 01:24 PM.
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