Paul:

Perhaps you have followed the development of "Super Critical Fuel
 Injection"
by a local Camarillo company, Transonic Combustion Inc.

"We bring dramatic fuel economy improvements to existing automotive
powertrains," said Brian Ahlborn, president and CEO,
Transonic Combustion, Inc. "Our approach to energy efficiency will
help the automotive industry meet 2016 fuel economy and emissions
 regulations

With Transonic Combustion's technology, the fuel is heated to 400 degrees
Celsius, which turns it into a vapor, or so-called supercritical
fuel. The vapor state allows it to mix with air much more quickly
and enter the combustion chamber much faster.  "In the supercritical
state, we are able to inject the fuel more rapidly and use
significantly less fuel to achieve the same amount of work to drive
the piston."

See: http://www.tscombustion.com, and

SAE articles: http://www.sae.org/mags/aei/7160

Keith Moore

Oxnard

"A modified gasoline engine installed in a 3200-lb (1451-kg)
test vehicle, for example, is getting 98 mpg (41.6 km/L)
when running at a steady 50 mph (80 km/h) in the lab."

Gee that sounds familiar.

Could that be the long lost 100 mpg carburetor? :)

A lot of fashionable green propaganda with zero technical
content.

I have the patent. Obviously the patent office
is no longer bothering to read the  pat apps :)

All those people and 70,000 square feet and no car I or
anybody else can drive? :)  I know a few automotive
journalist that would love to test it.

I'll believe it when I see it function :)

Paul Lamar


Sounds like a redo of Smoky's hot air engines. Gasoline does not vapourize
 all hydrocarbon components until about 450 degrees F. Not saying somebody
 can
 not come along with a little different slant and make something work, but if
 Smoky ran into brick walls with his connections; I don't know. The cool
 intake
 air is going to pull heat out of the fuel and have a tendency to condense
 it.
 Knowledge right now says to inject into the cylinder or intake and the
 evaporation will cool the air and make a denser charge. OOPS. Somebody got
 it
 wrong.

 Dale Davies


 Dale,

 FYI, 400 Celsius = 752 Fahrenheit; therefore, all the hydrocarbon components
 should be vaporized way before the 450 degrees Fahrenheit is reached.

 A denser charge can be achieved with anti detonation injection (ADI), which
 is very old technology.

 And that is my .02 worth...

 Norm DeBoer


I get it. It is the old steam engine trick.
Heat fluid until it expands. Injection water
into a hot cylinder causing it to expand.

Water injection is a form of turbo compound.

Steam occupies about 1,600 times the volume of an
equal mass of liquid water.

Heat any fluid hot enough in the absence of O2 and it
will greatly expand. Don't forget to add in the heat
it takes to heat the fluid when calculating
the MPG :)

If you use the exhaust to heat the fluid it
is also form of turbo compound.

Look up the six cycle engine.

In this case they are using the gasoline as the
working fluid in a steam engine :)

Another clever scam.

Paul Lamar


Dear all,

Interesting discussion.

With carburators and port injection the heat exchange between
the fuel and air starts before the air-fuel mixture enters the
cylinder. Hence the density of the air that enters the cylinder
is affected : slightly more mass can enter the cylinder. But
fuel needs to evaporate in order to burn completely. This
evaporation is normally taking place during the intake, during
compression while temperature increases and during combustion.
However for many molecules/droplets the evaporation is
incomplete or happens late and do not contribute to the
thermodynamic process. Combustion is most usefull when it occurs
during the beginning of the expansion so that the piston can
benefit from pressure as long as possible.

Smokey Yunik's carburettor used heated fuel so that it fully
vaporized before combustion which gave a full combustion early
in the working stroke. You will be able to find plenty of
similar systems on www.rexresearch.com. One of the latest in the
publicity was Fuel Vapor Technologies re-baptized recently into
Future Vehicle Technologies and participant in the automotive
X-Prize.

With modern direct injection systems things become a little
different. High pressure, multihole injectors enable very fine
droplets but still some improvement seems possible. The energy
(heat) required for the evaporation comes from the air after
compression which was put into it during the compression stroke
(mechanical energy).

Transonic's system injects warm fuel in supercritical (liquid)
state. It is liquid because of the high pressure level. Once the
fuel comes out of the injector nozzles the pressure drops and
the liquid instantaneously into vapor without additional heat
input. In fact supercritical means that it is on the transition
of fluid-gas. Kind of difficult concept to grasp. "It is a gas
and a liquid at the same time" may give you an idea what it
means. But what you have to remember is that it takes little
place and you can push a lot of it through the injectors in a
short time. And when thre pressure drops it instantaneously
takes up a lot of volume as a gas.

So in fact the injection introduces not only chemical energy but
thermal energy as well. And when the fuel is heated with exhaust
gas energy you have a beautiful example of waste heat
regeneration. Calling it turbo compounding would be misleading
but it makes indeed good use of exhaust waste heat.

Then, because the fuel instantaneously turns from liquid into
vapor the mixing with air is violent and more fuel molecules get
in contact with oxygen molecules. Hence the combustion is very
complete in a very short time which is also what others try to
achieve with Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI).
That is how more work can be obtained from the thermodynamic
cycle.

I think that the Transonic concept has good potential if it
works as predicted. I just hope they are able to manage the
temperature and pressure accurately enough so that it does not
gasify before going through the injector nozzle. Too few fuel
molecules would then enter the cylinders. Kind of comparable
with traditional vapor lock. I will keep an eye on their postings
and press releases.

When you talk about water injection and steam, yes, I agree, you
can get more out of combustion energy by using the exhaust and
combustion heat to generate steam pressure. It is not a new
idea. All old car manufacturers have tried it at least once in
the past but none of them applies it today in its cars.
Corrosion and durability issues inside the engine and injectors
are the reason for this. Solve the corrosion and you got a fuel
saver!
Best regards from Paris

Randolph Toom
heat2power

Yes but their web site looks so much like a million
other stock scam web sites :)

Paul Lamar