How to make the intake air more humid to save gas.

[chasgood]

<p>Back in the 70's&nbsp; gas crunch water injection kits were sold to increase mpg. The theory is humid air expands more when heated than dry air so less fuel is used to make the same power. The theory is sound but the kits made back then didnt work well. </p><p>Ever notice your car runs better in cool foggy weather?<br /></p><p>I was thinking about this when I saw a room humidifier at my sisters house. It uses some sort of pezo electric dodad to turn water into a cool vapor. I am not mechaniclly handy but thought could one of those things be put in a cars intake with a tube running to a bottle of water?</p><p>I hope someone out there handy with cars can give this a try. what do ya think?<br /></p>

[Matt Timion]

<p>Hopefully some of the experts can chime in here.&nbsp; I've heard arguements for WARM air helping gas mileage, as well as COLD air.&nbsp; Now we can throw HUMID air into the mix.&nbsp; Let me poke around and see what I can find out about it.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;I'm certain it wouldn't be difficult at all to manufacture a HAI (Humid Air Intake), but you'd have to somehow account for the air filter.&nbsp; Standard air filters would disolve, and race filters (like K&amp;N filters) would probably clog up pretty fast with the extra moisture.</p><p>Perhaps add the water AFTER the air filter?<br />&nbsp;</p>

[chasgood]

<p>Food for thought.</p><p>The Air Force used to have planes that had water injection to boost power. the jet engines in the first B52's needed water injection just to get off the ground. Later models had better engines and didnt need it. In the begining KC135's used water injection too. They have all been modified with bigger engines.<br /></p><p>Some prop planes during WWII used water injection as well. No jets back then.&nbsp;</p><p>Up intill 5 or 10 years ago bases had to have demineralized water on hand for these beasts.&nbsp;</p>

[Matt Timion]

<p>I was thinking about this last night and I had a few questions.&nbsp; First of all, weren't all cars carburated when the last gas crisis occured? Would the Humid Air Intake work better on carburated engines than fuel injection?</p><p>Secondly, isn't water in the gas typically something that is considered a bad thing?&nbsp; I mean, you get water in your gas tank and your car dies.&nbsp; How would putting water in the air intake be any different?&nbsp; See if you can find any information on the net about this, as I'd love to read more about it. &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

[SVOboy]

There are a bunch of things out on the market right now that do just this. You hook them up to your intake and they shoot some liquid in their for a better leaner mix. Those things don't work. They've been reviewed by a lot of consumer groups and they say they are all bunk. However, water may be different because this other injection things might just use some crap to get you to buy it. Mehbe you could retrofit one of those crappy kits to inject wudder instead and see what happens.

[chasgood]

Putting moisture in the intake air is different than putting water in the gas.
Humid air when heated expands more than dry air. When your spark plug fires and starts the combustion of the fuel air mixture it is the expansion of the gases that forces the piston down making hp and torque. more power per unit of fuel means you can let off the gas pedel a bit.

[SVOboy]

This sounds like a pretty sound theory, do you have any idea how to rig this up xor how to store the water and that type of thing?

[Matt Timion]

Originally Posted by SVOboy

This sounds like a pretty sound theory, do you have any idea how to rig this up xor how to store the water and that type of thing?

Why not have the air pass throught a water "filter" of sorts? you know, kind of like a water bong? This could actually server as a air filter too.

Or would could just put a hole in the air intake hose and feed some moisture in that way. It could siphon off of a spare wiper fluid container modified for this very reason.

[SVOboy]

Hell, I could just rewire my rear windshield wiper to shoot some junk in there, but the motor is awfully powerful for the situation, and it'd have to work all the time, so that idea actually sucks. But the storage idea is good. Could just hang a thing in there like when you wanna put a dangerous fish in a tank with other fish and not have it kill them all.

[signalautosupra]

yes water injection kits are very popular with the racing community also they use ethenaol injetion.

The main function of these systems is to suppress detonation caused by high temperature and pressure developed within the combustion chamber when the effective compression ratio has
been taken beyond the auto-ignition point by either a turbo or a supercharger.
Water, with its high latent heat content, is extremely effective for controlling
not only the onset of detonation but also the production of oxides of nitrogen in
the modern leanburn engines.

[signalautosupra]

thanks svoboy for the info on this site..

i got 48mpg out of my civic this week.........mostly pushing it stead of driving lol

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by signalautosupra

thanks svoboy for the info on this site..

i got 48mpg out of my civic this week.........mostly pushing it stead of driving lol

Hot dang I am jealous, I'll be trying to hit those numbers after a transmission swap, hope I can get there. In any case, about your above post: Does that mean the best thing to do it do look for a performance water injection mechanism? Is it possible that they are not set up in the way that will help with mileage or does it not matter? And if it does is there a way to tweak the thing into acting the way we want. Great explanation by the way, you know your stuff pretty solidly.

PS: Are you running this by any chance?

[signalautosupra]

no i just keep tire's inflated and i have a 92 civic vx with vtec-e for getting up hills. 87 hp is alittle rough, but it's a 2100lbs car so that makes a diffrent. i also have a front lip that help deflects wind.

i need to reduce my wieght 245- 200 and drop the car 100lbs and i should get another 1mpg.

[signalautosupra]

car also has 170k on it and i'm getting a major tune up done on it next week.

[SVOboy]

Let us know what happens after the tune up, should be interesting to hear!

[signalautosupra]

Only engine i have seen this kit on it forced in duction and one has a 150 shot of no^2 the water injection would shoot the same time the no^2 did.

[signalautosupra]

Only engine i have seen this kit on it forced induction and one has a 150 shot of no^2 the water injection would shoot the same time the no^2 did.

[SVOboy]

That sounds pretty scary for me, as an mpg guy. Mehbe I'll ask my cousin, he boosts to 20 or 25 I think, but he doesn't use nos...

[Matt Timion]

I'll serve this file for a little while so everyone can download it. This is a step by step for creating one of these things. The author does not tell you how much of a gain you get in terms of mpg though.

http://www.gassavers.org/node/90

[SVOboy]

Yep, so pretty good. Can you emaill the guy who did it for some numbers on mpg and stuff? Also, fill up every five days, gosh, I wonder how many miles that is...

[Matt Timion]

Originally Posted by SVOboy

Yep, so pretty good. Can you emaill the guy who did it for some numbers on mpg and stuff? Also, fill up every five days, gosh, I wonder how many miles that is...

I actually got that file from the yahoo group BetterMPG. I'll see what I can find about the guy who wrote it.

[Matt Timion]

http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1979_September_October/Water_Injection_Wizardry

[SVOboy]

http://users.frii.com/maphill/wi.html

[chasgood]

I think there used to be ads for kits in the back of Popular Science. likely in the late 70's too.

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by chasgood

I think there used to be ads for kits in the back of Popular Science. likely in the late 70's too.

Haha, seems like a hard thing to dig up a kit for if it is indeed that old, but it doesn't look so hard to fabricate.

[chasgood]

Ok you guys. Can we take the info from the past and modernize it. Find a newer better way to get water vapor into the engine. maybe something like in my first post. Something like the room humidifiers use. I'm thinking a fog like vapor of water will work better than tiny droplets drom a spray nozzle.

[SVOboy]

Originally Posted by chasgood

Ok you guys. Can we take the info from the past and modernize it. Find a newer better way to get water vapor into the engine. maybe something like in my first post. Something like the room humidifiers use. I'm thinking a fog like vapor of water will work better than tiny droplets drom a spray nozzle.

Do you know how the thing actually vaporizes? This is what I am wondering, I know that it is really the only thing on a humifier that would require power, and the problem might be that addition of a powered element, and it's ability to withstand constant heat and use. I think the principle behind the old stuff that we need to keep with is that it is only injecting the wudder when the throttle is open, and that is why vacuum in the droplets works, when it might be hard to do some electrical thing to signal the humifier to draw and process its wudder, but I am not sure, I will look for some newer sources of info and how the turbo kits do it.

[Matt Timion]

Originally Posted by SVOboy

Do you know how the thing actually vaporizes? This is what I am wondering, I know that it is really the only thing on a humifier that would require power, and the problem might be that addition of a powered element, and it's ability to withstand constant heat and use. I think the principle behind the old stuff that we need to keep with is that it is only injecting the wudder when the throttle is open, and that is why vacuum in the droplets works, when it might be hard to do some electrical thing to signal the humifier to draw and process its wudder, but I am not sure, I will look for some newer sources of info and how the turbo kits do it.

it actually might be totally possible to wire it up to the TPS sensor. The tps sensor detects when the throttle is open or closed. Hook up the TPS sensor to a relay that turns the humidifier on or off.

perhaps Diemaster can help with the electronics here. A humidifier isn't too complex. I'm sure if we took one apart we could EASILY get it to fit inside the air intake tube. Perhaps it can even be wired to the a switched power source that comes on when car starts.

[SVOboy]

<a href=http://www.rallycars.com/Cars/WaterInjection.html target=_blank>Wudder Injection</a>

Water injection systems are predominantly useful in forced induction (turbocharged or supercharged), internal combustion engines. Only in extreme cases such as very high compression ratios, very low octane fuel or too much ignition advance can it benefit a normally aspirated engine. The system has been around for a long time since it was already used in some World War II aircraft engines.

Does this mean bad things for the average car driver like us? I dunno much about advanced timing, so enlighten me if it is an issure, please.

[SVOboy]

<a href=http://www.dawesdevices.com/howto.html target=_blank>Wudder Injection</a>

As I collect them, I'll put some more links up here.