Water injection has been around for years and was used on a number of WWII fighter aircraft, such as the F4U Corsair/P-51 Mustang and I understand full well how it works.
If you’ve ever seen pics of a current Air Force B-52 bomber taking off while trailing clouds of black smoke then that is also caused by water injection.
The part left out is that aircraft water injection is only used during times when full military power is needed and even then only very briefly. There are also no claims being made that it is going to increase the aircraft’s gallons per hour stats.
One also needs to consider this if a full-time water injection system is used. Water, and anti-freeze, is corrosive to metal when placed under heat and pressure and it won’t take long for valves/seats to go away along with destroying pistons and rings; not to mention diluting the engine oil. Nothing better than water contaminated engine oil, huh?
As to this scam that H20 in a bottle gimmick has been around for years. It seems like the first time I saw one of these scams in a jar was back around 1980 or so.
So ask yourself; if it’s been around so long, works miracles, etc., then why hasn’t every car made in the last 30 years been equipped with one? Production line costs would be mere pennies.
Current B52s, G and H models, the last H model of which was accepted in the AF in the early '60s (1962 if memory serves…the dates are actually on the ID plates on the jam of the drop door, toward the rear of the aircraft), don’t use water injection. But you’re correct, the old C and D models (D models were still active at the end of Vietnam) used water injection to enhance compression in the first stage of the turbines.
You’re also correct in that water injection did not reduce fuel consumption but rather provided a bit extra power.
As it applies to an automobile, it did used to be used as (as one poster said) an early method of increasing density, like an intercooler. But those were raw, inefficient fuel delivery systems…early carburators. Spewing out unburned fuel and other now-unacceptable emissions was perfactly okay. I’d argue that today’s engines have no use for them, and that they can in fact hurt performance and fuel economy.
One of the most basic laws in chemistry is that if a reaction is exothermic (releases energy), then reversing that reaction is equally endothermic (absorbs energy). What is water anyway? It’s hydrogen that has already been burned! It released a lot of energy when that happened. Guess what you have to do to unburn it and turn it back into hydrogen and oxygen. You have to give all that energy back plus whatever is lost in inefficency.
Thinking that hydrogen is a free source of energy is like thinking that gravity powers downhill skiers. See how much skiing gets done when after the lifts close.
Water is injected into the intake manifold and cools the air as it evaporates, leading to higher air density, which increases the volumetric efficiency (VE).
The power increase occurs primarily from the heat in the combustion chamber which turns the water into a vapor. That vapor is 16 times the size of the original water - causing a pressure increase (and an increased push on the piston).
I used to manage a gas station in the 70’s (overseas). There was a big flood one time & we didn’t know the cap for the UGTs (underground tanks) were not properly screwed tight (probably tanker driver’s fault). So water got into the UGTs. We sucked the tanks dry the best we could & let them dried out. Water & gasoline don’t mix. Although H2O stays on the bottom of the tanks, the suction power of the gas pump still get some H2O out. Anyway, we had many customers complained about backfiring after filing up. We thought we took out every drop from the UGTs. So I don’t think plain water as a fuel mix with gasoline will work.
The power used to crack the water comes from excess energy expended by the engine. I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with injecting hydrogen in any meaningful amount into the cylinders. It will almost certainly change the combustion characteristics of the fuel and may damage the engine. I’d like to see an unbiased evaluation of power vs. fuel mixture.
Just to add an example to my prior comment about a steady diet of water or anti-freeze being very corrosive.
When I worked for VW a lady was considering purchasing a demo VW (only 400 miles on it) from us or a new Buick from our sister store down the road. She opted for the VW and the Buick salesman came over and picked up the VW from us (effectively cutting the throat of the salesman at our store).
The lady drove off and returned a few minutes later with the temp gauge pegging out. The Buick salesman told her that “it’s normal for them to go high and then drop back”. Hmmmmm.
So off she goes with the car progressively losing power and starting to smoke like a grass fire. Eventually at 20 MPH tops a cop pulled her over, she explained the predicament, and that she was trying to get home to call us.
The car was towed in and the engine would basically freewheel due to the starter motor; no compression in a nutshell and the thought was that no way should a timing belt have broken on a near new car.
Removed the spark plugs (5 cylinder engine) and compression was at 0 on 3 cylinders and about 70 on the remaining 2.
Timing marks were dead on and when air was applied to the cylinders it blew violently out the intake and exhaust.
Removed cylinder head and it was absolute junk, not even repairable. On the 3 cyls. with 0 compression the exhaust valve heads were almost completely gone and there was nothing left but a stem with the beginning of a slight bell. The seats were so far gone that parts of the head in that area was also missing. The remaining 2 cylinders were not that bad but not because of lack of effort. The car just flat quit before that point.
This severe oveheating was caused by a puncture in one of the heater hoses; how it got there was never known.
My point is to show how bad, and how quickly, water or anti-freeze will chew up metal when admitted into the combustion chamber and put under pressures like that. In this case, it took less than 15 miles to turn a sweet running new car into a junk one.
(Follow up. The lady then opted for the Buick, VW covered this under warranty (after me and the VW rep had a LONG conversation about this), and I had to replace the crankshaft, bearings, piston rings, and complete cylinder head assembly. After that, the car was sold at a huge discount and the new owner was advised of this problem before purchase. Another oddity was no scoring of the piston skirts; can’t explain that at all).
Water in liquid form is a hostile fluid in mechanical devices. In food processing plants they use water in hydraulic systems where a small leak of convemtional hydraulic fluid would contaminate food. The hydraulic components working with water don’t last as long as components working with hydraulic fluid. This is in spite of the fact that the water using components were designed to work with water. You don’t want water in liquid form in your engine or in your gasoline.
Water injection was used in piston engine aircraft for short bursts. And those aircraft engines had the pistons and valves examined and replaced more frequently than the non water injection engines.
If you have seen a tea pot that has boiled dry you will see a residue. That stuff was in the water and you don’t want it in your engine.
I used to race a motorcycle and found that if I sprayed some water on the foam air filter, the engine would produce more power for a short period of time. Then the water would be evaporated and the performance would revert to normal. This is not surprising if you consider that engines produce slightly more power on a cool humid day.
Because the water was evaporating on the motorcycle air filter the residue was left in the air filter, not the engine.
I remember water injection devices for cars being sold in the 60’s. They might do a little good for a limited amount of time, but they were definately not good for the engine.
It would be possible to build a water vapor injection system that would enhance the performance and/or economy of an automobile but it would not be easy or cheap. Among other problems you have to deal with is all the residue in water. It would cost a lot to get a relatively small improvement. You would get more improvement for less money by making the bottom of the car streamlined for instance.
Something that makes me chuckle are these magnets that you attach to the fuel line. They won’t work unless you say the magic word when you install them.
In addition, the water being significantly heavier than gasoline the water would tend to drop to the bottom of the float bowl. It would seem that it would interfere with metering of the gasoline more substantially than its proportion would indicate that it might.
I’ve never tested this theory, it’s just a hypothesis.
My dad had a 1951 Cadillac that had a little black tank under the hood, about half a gallon, for admitting water into the engine. But I later thought the idea must not have worked, or it would be standard equipment on cars, like PCV, and EGR had become for emissions control gains.
op, I have read the water 4 gas website and a couple of related articles, just out of curiosity. I’m not an automotive expert, but I do know a bit about physics and chemistry. The principle is that extra energy from the engine is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which is then routed into the air intake. The resulting mixture of fuel vapor + 2H2 + O2 is said to burn more efficiently than fuel vapor alone. If indeed there is extra current from the alternator that can be used by an electrolysis gadget without lowering engine efficiency, then in principle this process would make sense.
Note that I am not talking about injecting liquid or vaporized water into the fuel line. This is a misunderstanding by uninformed people who see the stupid slogans for the gadget like “water4gas” and “run your car on water!”.
I have no idea if it works. Supposedly, in Canada the apparatus has been installed in some trucks, yielding higher gas mileage. You can google the information and read up on it for yourself. It would be nice if this gadget worked. But if it did, then probably we’d be seeing it in at least a few cars from Japan and Europe, where the people have significant incentives to eke more mileage out of their fuel.
If indeed there is extra current from the alternator that can be used by an electrolysis gadget without lowering engine efficiency, then in principle this process would make sense.
Here’s the thing about alternators. In a car the alternator is voltage regulated, so current supplied goes up or down depending on what loads are turned on. For example, the alternator supplies more current when the headlights are on than when they are off. So, there is no “extra current” looking for a place to go. The second thing about alternators is that as the electrical load goes up, so does the mechanical effort to turn the alternator. So, the electrolysis unit would have to draw more current out of the alternator and thus increase the load on the engine negating any extra power you get from the hydrogen and oxygen. In fact, you can’t get as much power out of the hydrogen and oxygen generated as it takes to split it. With perfect efficiency at every step you’d just break even, and there is no perfect efficiency.
This really is the old perpetual-motion machine question all over again. It takes more energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen than you can get out of it by “burning” the hydrogen. It would be wonderful if that wasn’t true, but there you go.
The water injection systems had a second carburetion jet for the water. The system worked by using the water to slow the flame front (preventing knocking) and the expansion of the steam in addition to the gasoline exhaust.
Did everyone on here miss the Fox News report on a device called the HydranOX5000? It was tested in 10 Police vehicles (5 cruisers, 5 SUV’s)in the Chicago area.
Fox News got the following results:
all vehicles showed an increase in HP (through Dyno Testing)
The SUV’s showed a 10% improvement in fuel economy.
I have one of these installed in a 2002 Ford ZX2 (2.0 liter 4 Cylender fuel Injected car), in the winter the device makes little to no diffrence, however when air temperatures are constantly above 70 degrees I see a gas milage increase of about 10% above what my gas milage was before installing the device. (I’m not advocating that anyone buy one, I’m just stating the results I’ve gotten with one) I don’t work for the company that makes these or sell them, I was just one of thier customers.
Here is a discription of how the thing works:
It uses 4 oz of Sodium Citrate, desolved in 16 oz of distilled water.
there are two hoses that come out of the unit
The Annode (positive) side hose gets routed to the air intake before the air filter.
The Cathode (negitive) side hose is vented to the atmosphere.
Electricity is pulled from the altinator while the car is running, causing electrolisys (the separation of water into Oxygen and Hydrogen) The sodium citrate assists with this process by increasing the conductivity of the water.
Hydrogen is present in the air arround us, all this device does is change the chemical composition of the air in the car’s intake to include (very) slightly more hydrogen. The Hydrogen is then burned in the engine with the Oxygen and Fuel. The O2 sensor before the catalytic converter that us used by the engine management system to control air/fuel mixture detects less Oxygen (because of burning the higher hydrogen content in the intake air) and reduces the amount of fuel going into the cylinders, causing the engine to run slightly lean, and thereby saving fuel.