X-Prize Daytona

[mpgmike]

For my own selfish reasons, I'm curious if you could get the resistance of the air gap this way?
..

Resistance? Air gap? You lost me. Ionic feedback?

The MPG Plus (green ignition) wires are solid core with 0.0 ohms resistance per foot. The little wires will connect to the ignition display on the control panel (previous page).

Mike

[banger68]

Typical wire insulation is rated for 600V or 1000V. The voltage on the spark plug wire is 22k volts if I remember right. You will need to insulate them from ground and possibly each other. The size is fine for the current requirements.

How big of a bath did you make for plating? Fit intercooler piping ... j/k
Love all the detail work.

[Reaper1]

Mike, could you use the hot side of the peltiers when it is in "cool" mode for the air to heat up the fuel?

I am looking at doing some thermo mods for my car when I build my engine to help with power and economy and one of my ideas was to actually use the engine coolant to warm up the fuel. I think it would help dramatically (especially to help prevent vapor lock) to have it thermostatically controlled. I also want to figure a way to harness more of the exhaust thermo energy. Of course weight is a concern because of the purpose of the car, so I'm unsure exactly what to do here yet. The other thing is I want to keep complexity down for easy of maintenance and for a cleaner look (to a lesser extent).

I've looked at those fuel cats before and they look to be promising from an engineering and scientific standpoint. I am anxious to hear what your take is on them and what kind of gains might be expected.

[mpgmike]

What you see in the pics is my bath. Too small for IC piping.

I have the Peltier chips rigged up to also heat the air with the flip of a switch. It's on the control panel. I will speak favorably of the Cal Cat as I helped develop it. I've played with simple fuel heaters with moderate results as well.



I appreciate the professionalism and courtesy extended by the doubters out there. I have a hunch that the vast majority of you are thinking, “He ain’t gonna do it! It can’t be done!” I wanted to take a few moments to put things into perspective for you, and hopefully help you to better understand what it takes to improve performance and economy at the same time. In other words, I’m outlining my strategy in a somewhat vague but applicable scientific mini-thesis. To begin with, the US EPA publically admits the modern internal combustion, gasoline powered engine is only about 18 percent efficient.
Simple math would indicate over 80 percent room for improvement. Put another way, if a vehicle gets 25 miles per gallon with 200 HP on tap (at current volumetric efficiencies), it is hypothetically capable of getting 125 MPG with about 1000 HP available by bumping the efficiency rating to 100 percent. Reduce other losses with synthetic greases, lightened weight, and even better aerodynamics, and the possibilities go even higher. You may be thinking that it really isn’t practical, though. Please read on.

If you have the stomach to follow along, I’m going to take you on a journey that can potentially blow your mind. The numbers published by the EPA are based on NET energy values. Remember the discussion on ENDothermic and EXothermic reactions? The energy rating of the fuel is what’s left over after all the endothermic losses are subtracted. With me so far? Good. One source claims gasoline has 20,750 BTUs per pound. BTUs can be converted to kilowatts (kW), horsepower (HP), or many other designations of energy. The EPA bases its efficiency rating on the amount of energy required to move the vehicle down the road, versus how many BTUs of gasoline (the way it is rated) it took to do it.

The EPA claims that gasoline engines converted to run on propane are about 42 percent efficient. Propane has about 21,700 BTU per pound, but is run at a leaner AFR than gasoline, and it takes more gallons of propane to make a pound than does gasoline. Natural gas conversions are rated at about 60 % efficient, and it takes even more gallons to equal a pound. A couple of things should stand out as obvious. First, gasoline is injected in a pseudo-liquid state called an aerosol. Since liquid fuel doesn’t burn, lots of BTUs are absorbed simply vaporizing the fuel. (Remember your science class where it takes 1 calorie to raise 1 cc of water 1 degree C, until you get to a phase change? The BTU requirements go through the roof to get water to boil!) Turbo guys dump more fuel to keep combustion temps sane using this principle. Propane and natural gas don’t have that issue since both are 100% vapor in the combustion process (very low boiling points). Better vaporizing gasoline reduces the BTU losses, while making the fuel more combustible. Along these lines, the cylinder head work combined with the Cal Cat are designed to better vaporize the fuel, thus reducing the losses required to phase change the gasoline to a vapor. Fuel economy goes up, and power goes up, as more energy is left over to do work.

Moving on, there are 4 states of matter: solid, liquid, vapor, and plasma. Looking at water, in its solid form it is ice. In its liquid form it is plain water. In its vapor form it is what we would call humidity (not steam, that’s an aerosol combined with vapor). The plasma form would be HHO, where the atoms are no longer bound in a molecular structure. For fuel and oxygen to combust, both must elevate to the plasma state first, then reconfigure into stable water and carbon dioxide. To get the constituents to the plasma state takes energy; much like it takes high levels of energy to boil water. Both are phase changes of matter. As hinted at previously, this would be an ENDothermic reaction, where it absorbs energy. In addition to better vaporizing the fuel to reduce endothermic losses, the Cal Cat, and Inter Charger pull electrons to destabilize the molecules and reduce endothermic losses. It is probable that gasoline could have more net energy released after passing through the Cal Cat than it is rated to have. The reason is reduced endothermic losses because of the removed electrons (less energy required to hit plasma).

For the third chapter, we need to look at some relatively basic math. Gasoline burns at 41.5 cm³/second. An engine with a 90 mm stroke (the 2.2 has a 92 mm stroke), running 2000 RPM, at 90 degrees ATDC has a piston speed of 6,666.67 cm²/second (a 2.2 piston would be even faster, and a 2.5…). I know Jim McFarland and others have used pressure transducers mounted in the head that show pressure at mid stroke and beyond, but anybody that knows anything about weather can affirm that it is possible to have a pressure in the cylinder head while having a vacuum on the surface of the piston. The math I’ve run shows that the piston begins to out-run the pressure wave between 30 degrees ATDC and 45 degrees ATDC. Beyond that, gasoline continues to burn, but contributes nothing toward powering the vehicle. It simply heats the coolant and exhaust (and perhaps powers the turbo).

To break it down even more, the engine burns gasoline. This chemical to thermal energy conversion produces heat. Heat by itself does not power a vehicle. A second conversion is required, thermal to kinetic. The nitrogen in the intake air charge, and the water and carbon dioxide byproducts from combustion will expand when heated. This expansion of gasses produces a pressure. The pressure pushes down on the piston. Viola, power! Dang it, I probably lost a few of you by now. Sorry.

Any engine running at 2000 RPM has 15 milliseconds to get the piston from TDC to BDC. The spark plug fires typically before TDC. The piston begins to move at around 14-15 degrees ATDC (known as critical crank angle). Considering the piston begins to outrun the pressure wave at around 30 to 45 degrees ATDC, we have about 3 to 4 milliseconds to extract all the energy we can from the combustion process at the crank. Remember how hexane burns in less than 1 millisecond once vaporized, but the heavy elements in gasoline take upwards of more than 33 milliseconds once vaporized!? Can you see where some of your 80 percent losses are going?

My strategy is 3 fold: better vaporize and homogenize the fuel with the air; remove electrons from the combustion constituents; and do anything to speed up the burn. You can get lots of practical knowledge from The Ultimate Fuel Economy Book (FuelEconomyTips.biz) with how-to projects and pictures. When you think about how the energy content of fuel is rated, it is technically possible to get more than 100% of the energy (rated) out of fuel. I’ll touch on that one again in a future post.

More later,
Mike

[Reaper1]

Your example of the piston outrunning the pressure wave is EXACTLY why we want to improve the rod ratio (more dwell time at TDC), and also why a smaller bore size and good squish areas for the combustion chamber are important. Of course the smaller bore size is a double edge sword because you increase valve shrouding which hampers flow.

I think it should be mentioned that the cam MUST be changed in order to take advantage of the improved rod ratio as the valve events can't be the same to net any kind of tangible result.

[RoadWarrior222]

My strategy is 3 fold: better vaporize and homogenize the fuel with the air; remove electrons from the combustion constituents; and do anything to speed up the burn.

To avoid you banging your head against a brick wall when development along these lines seems to plateau, you might want to check out reports of Hydrogen gas conversions of conventional engines and see what is said about the mechanical limits of the otto cycle engine. Basically, although Hydrogen gas has an insanely high flame front speed, there's a limit to what the motor can use. Thus, I tend to think one needs both a fast burn that peaks as piston passes halfway then a second phase slower burn to keep up pressure as it nears BDC. Though, it's gotta be thought out in a way that doesn't rob heat too much from the fast burn phase, or at least pays it back. I almost wonder if going way either side of the average hydrocarbon numbers would work, having both a very lightweight quick burner and a heavierweight slow burner that takes a lot of heat and pressure to light off.

Anyway, if you could figure a catalyst that broke chunks off the middleweight chains, let one chunk go and tagged the other chunk to a different molecule to make a longer chain, that might work. (If ever a dual fuel propane conversion falls in my lap I might mess around with filling it with kerosene in the gas tank, reducing supply pressures by half and running both systems at the same time)

I still see problems with pre-cats from spare carbons and metal deactivators in the gas wanting to foul them. However, I'm getting excited about the concept of electronic programmable atoms (Quantum dots) , nothing can get stuck to them because the electrons are so weakly attached. Researchers are futzing trying to make them stable before they figure they're useful, who needs stable, just recreate the damn thing 50 times a second when it's a catalyst.

[Reaper1]

I don't want to take away from the actual thread, but I'm interested in how water/meth injection reacts in the thermo and chemical reactions with the gasoline. We know that it helps prevent knock and reduces EGT, but is this a good thing or at a cost of efficiency?

I understand thermo pretty well, but chemistry wasn't my strong suit. I get it understand it, but not well enough to do the redox (if I'm not mistaken) myself off the top of my head.

[zin]

Water pretty much acts as a heat sink, the alky is an antifreeze, but some like to run high concentrations as a supplemental fuel.

Beyond this it would be best to start another thread, as there are many strong opinions on the subject and we don't want to crapify Mike's thread ... unless, of course Mike wants to go down that road.

Mike

[RoadWarrior222]

IMO, water helps FE. I've got something like one of these...
http://www.salterlabs.com/index.cfm?...&category_id=5
That I picked up to try tacking into a vac line...

It absorbs heat, but only after such heat would be wasted, i.e. stops it being lost to the walls after everything is burning.

[mpgmike]

Gasoline burns at 41.5 cm/sec and bottled hydrogen burns at 237 cm/sec. You can do lots to gasoline to speed up the burn and never get anywhere near the problems associated with hydrogen. Water injection adds to the process something that slows down the burn, actually increases the EXPANSION MEDIUM potential (water expands 12X as much as nitrogen per BTU input), and absorbs heat as it phase changes. Bottom line is that it deters detonation. I'll have to brush up on my quantum dots.

After posting the mini-tech thesis, I was lying awake in bed and had this nagging urge to “check the math”. I used a number, a 90 mm stroke engine at 2000 RPM has a peak piston speed of 6666.67 cm/second. I prepared a technical thesis 2 years ago and had some expert help. I asked one of my team members to run that math as he has a Masters Degree in Engineering. That was the number he gave me. I never checked it…until last night. I went downstairs sometime after midnight and broke out the fancy calculator and ran the numbers myself. Here is what I got. 90 mm stroke engine at 2000 RPM has a peak piston speed (around 90 degrees ATDC) of 9424.5 cm/sec. A 92 mm stroke 2.2 liter has 9634.2 cm/sec peak speed at 2k. A 2.5 liter with a 104 mm stroke has peak piston speed at 10,890.85 cm/sec at 2k. A 2.2 liter at 6000 RPM has a peak piston speed of 28,902.7 cm/sec, while a 2.5 screams along at 32,672.56 cm/sec. (This is like running a touch-down from the 30 yard line in about 1 second.) Before my error was publicly pointed out by a loving fellow forum member, I hoped to set the math straight myself.

I spoke with the machine shop today and he apologized for taking so long, but promised the head back Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. Since the cylinder head should be coming back soon, here are the mods to the valves. For starters, the intake valves have rings ground into the back sides to promote better vaporization. Think about it, the fuel is heavier than the air, and will centrifugally sling against the back of the intake valve, while the lighter air and vaporized fuel will hug the seat. The valve is still hot from the last combustion cycle, so let’s take advantage of this heat without affecting the majority of the intake charge. The Powre Ringz (as I call them) add surface area and turbulence to this hot area to promote better vaporization of the fuel without directly affecting the bulk of the intake charge (which should be kept as cool as possible). This can be done either on a lathe or drill press with a Dremel and a steady hand.


Both intake and exhaust valves get the stems and combustion chamber sides polished. The exhaust valves also get the back sides polished. Polishing starts with 320 grit sand paper, progresses to 400 grit, then gets a Scotch Brite finish pass.


The tips of the valves are refaced to restore a flat surface without any stress cracks or divots.


The exhaust valves get electroplated with a proprietary catalyst material that promotes better ionization of the fuel prior to, and during combustion, reducing endothermic losses. The seats are refaced, and the exhaust valves get a back-cut.


The finished valves represent a substantial improvement over stock for combustion efficiency, and a moderate improvement for volumetric efficiency.


Springs, retainers, keepers, cam followers, and lash adjusters are all stock pieces that have been cleaned up.

More a-coming, head is due back soon!

Mike

["Top Fuel" Bender]

The exhaust valves get electroplated with a proprietary catalyst material that promotes better ionization of the fuel prior to, and during combustion, reducing endothermic losses. The seats are refaced, and the exhaust valves get a back-cut.


Mike

did you find a different catalyst that works or just the fact that you moved it to the exhaust valve instead?
I remember you trying it on the intake but wasn't near the temp needed to get the desired results

[mpgmike]

Actually I cheated on the catalyst concept. I simply contacted Larry Widmer (TheOldOne.com) and ran ideas past him. He already did that R&D.

As a side note, I’m also prepping a 2003 Mercury Grand Marquis in X-Prize fashion for a business associate. Many of the tricks used on the Daytona will be also used on the Merc, and one or two that aren’t. Different application with different objectives, you know.



Moving on to some practical application of the science lesson mentioned previously where endothermic losses were discussed. The idea of pulling electrons from the stable constituents making the charge more combustible was explored. The Cal Cat pulls electrons from the fuel. The Inter Charger pulls electrons from the PCV charge. What about the air?

Newer vehicles use coil packs, or even Coil On Plug designs. However, our benevolent Turbo Mopars still use distributors (for the most part, TIII aside). The ignition coil discharges a high-voltage that is passed through the coil wire to the distributor cap, through the rotor (all of which have a secure connection), and jumps across to the individual terminals. Folks, this is an electrical arc. Anytime there is an electrical arc there will be ozone. Why is this significant? Glad you asked.

The air contains O₂, which is stable oxygen. Ozone is O₃, O₄, and so on, and is NOT stable. It takes far less energy to split oxygen atoms from an ozone molecule than it does a stable oxygen molecule found in the ambient air. By ozonating the incoming air charge, the oxygen contribution to combustion is rendered more accessible to the combustion process, with less of an endothermic loss factor. While researching ozone about 9 years ago, one scientific source stated that a petrochemical fuel (gasoline for example) combusted using ozone as the oxidizer would release substantially more energy than the fuel was rated to contain (by current rating methods). See where this makes sense?


My method is 2 part; tap the distributor cap, and actually install additional ozone generators in the intake charge. By pulling the ozone from the cap, it isn’t there to corrode the terminals, thus prolonging the life of the cap. The distributor cap is first drilled slightly smaller than the typical plastic vacuum tubing found on practically every vehicle manufactured since 1980.


The hole is drilled opposite the vent cap.


The plastic vacuum tubing is then pressed deep enough that it doesn’t readily pull out, but not so deep that the rotor hits it. It is secured with JB Weld, Set And Seal, or other similar adhesive.


It looks like this from the top when finished.


This provides the engine with ozone whenever there is vacuum, but not under boost, or even when the throttle is punched and the intake is at atmospheric pressure. It takes vacuum to pull it through. The next issue is that our engines produce boost. To prevent the boost from possibly blowing out the cap, a check valve is inserted between the cap and the throttle body (vacuum source for normal operation), close to the throttle body. These can be found on late ‘70s and early ‘80s Ford, GM, and AMC products. Many of them have a slight bleed rate, and many have orifices built in. They have color bands that indicate something or another, so leaving the junk yard with a handful and trying different ones might be your best bet. The one shown is an aftermarket version.


To get the most benefit from the ozone potential, I am adding an ozone driver and 2 ozone coils from Information Unlimited (www.Amazing1.com). This will give me about 60 mg/hr.


The coils will be mounted in the Arctic Air Charger. On most applications I simply mount them in the plastic air cleaner. The far right switch on the control panel says “Ion”. This is one of the things it controls.

More to come,

Mike

[Force Fed Mopar]

That is some cool stuff!

[RoadWarrior222]

I'm seeing "USB ionisers" in a discount store near here, waiting until they clear them out to pick up a few. Figure they'll work wired 2 or 3 in series. Though actually I'm having a thought now that they're rigged backwards for ozone, will have to look that up again, so might need some reconfiguring.

[Aries_Turbo]

i'm very interested to see the results.

it seems that each modification may not make that big of a difference if its the only one used and perhaps thats why so many scream "its snake oil!!!!" but if you combine them all together... thats a different story.

i still think you use "ricer" spelling though hehe.

Brian

[RoadWarrior222]

Often it's that some cars have quirks that a device can exploit, but it don't work so well on others (Back when very few cars had swirl ports or heads, those "tornado twister" type gadgets had good effects). Also a problem is that "official" testing under an EPA regime often doesn't show anything, due to the gas-brakes-gas-brakes nature of the test, steady state cruising gets 2 mins. Also is that ECUs, even some of the quite ancient ones we deal with, have a tendency to tune out some mods. Applying multiple mods at once does have the advantage that several sensor readings might wander a few percent at once, so rather than offsetting one sensor or another the ECU might "accept" a new set of conditions and not tune each thing out as it might individually.

[zin]

Also is that ECUs, even some of the quite ancient ones we deal with, have a tendency to tune out some mods.

This is a big part why bolt-on mods don't seem to work that well in the context of MPG mods. I contend that so much of what the ECU is doing is in an effort to hit somewhat arbitrary EPA goals and so MPGs take a back seat! Since many of the gas saving techniques conflict with their programing, they fail or worse, degrade performance!

Lean burn mixtures are an example, if you run 14.7, that's great for a catalytic converter, but 17:1 is much better for MPGs, but since NOx will be higher, that's a no no... Nevermind that modern catalysts can treat NOx... Cutting fuel on de-celeration is one of those incremental things that save some fuel... But EPA won't let that happen because it might let the cat cool off and not treat the exhaust as well, so that's not allowed...

I'm convinced that if the mandate to manufactures were changed from impossible emissions standards (PZEV, etc) to MPG improvements, we'd be in much better shape as a nation, both from an environmental standpoint and an economic/energy independence standpoint.

Mike

["Top Fuel" Bender]

Mike

Would capping off the vent on top of the cap help pull more vac.? there is a hole on the bottom of the dist.

i still think you use "ricer" spelling though hehe.

Brian

It's a Pa Dutch thing

[Reaper1]

Mike, I'm SO glad you mentioned Larry Widmer! He's one of my all time automotive heroes! As a matter of fact I've got his page open right now in a different tab. I was doing some back reading on rod ratio the other night! LOL That guy was doing stuff back in the 70's that STILL hasn't been adopted yet, but promises SO much! If only we could get him to do some head/piston set-up's for us! DRROOOOOLLLLL!!! I wish they'd open to forum back up. I miss that! There was SO much good information there.

[mpgmike]

Putting a vacuum on the distributor cap is a kiss of death to the ignition system. Electrons flow freely in any direction under vacuum. My uncle had a '90 Dodge pickup. I helped him give it a tune up. I pointed out the distributor cap had no vent. He installed it anyways. 2 weeks later the truck was undrivable. After way too many hours of dorking around and tossing parts at it, I suggested putting the old cap back on to see what would happen. Guess what? It drove like a dream. With no vent the crankcase was putting a slight vacuum on the cap through the distributor housing and it killed the cap.

Larry Widmer is my #1 automotive hero (I have other heros for other reasons).

I can’t give you all the pictures, but I have some from before the head went to the machine shop. Starting with the combustion chamber, there are 4 major things that were done. First, the heart portion was radically radiused. It gets blended seamlessly into the sides around the valve areas, and the area between the valves. Secondly, the mound around the spark plug was dramatically radiused.


Thirdly, the “dead zone” between the intake valve and spark plug got dimples to activate that area. (Archive picture.)


Finally, the area around the exhaust valve is taken out to the edge of the cylinder wall, while the area around the intake valve is left with a mini ledge. A ledge on the exhaust side acts much like a mis-matched port between the manifold and head. It creates unwanted turbulence during the exhaust stroke. The little ledge on the intake side creates wanted turbulence that helps to better homogenize the air and fuel so I leave it there. I take this principle to the area directly around the valve seats as well. Exhaust seat area is smoothly blended into the chamber, while the intake seat area is left with the machining steps.


This head is getting mounted on an ’86 engine. Putting a stock 782 on an older block that came with a bathtub head raises the compression ratio markedly. The amount of material removed from this head should get the CR back close to stock.

More to come.

Mike