Talented inventors final project proves deadly

I've seen that one... Dude created lots of karma for himself, that's for sure.

 

Midgely was surely 'a piece of work'. I would not bestow on him most harmful inventor title without further consideration.

 

The other solutions to engine knock is water misting the intake air when the engine is under load and electrolytically splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen ... this method adds a fu? el that recombines into water droplets when ignited and these droplets turn into super heated steam when they absorb the peak heat that causes the knock, and also increases torque because the spur heated steam attempts to turn back into water as the piston travels past top dead centre. The super heated steam has to release a lot of stored energy, much like a steam train, pushing the piston down until the exhaust valve opens.
Cooling to initial combustion peak temp also reduces the production of NO2, the same job the EGR valve does, but it doesn't reduce performance, nor does it cause a higher fuel consumption because it doesn't deliberately make the combustion mix less flammable .....

Can you sell water? You can these days, but you couldn't back then ..... but these days, you can sell p*ss and call it adblue and force heavy diesel engine manufacturers to design it into their operating system ... where injecting LPG in the intake mix does the same job ..... but that is cheap compared to adblue ....

T1 Terry

 

Water doesn't split when used for water injection.

Seems LPG injection only reduces a third of the NOx that SCR does. While the LPG is cheaper per than DEF, the system uses more per gallon of diesel burned. While it does displace some diesel used, that just means it's a fuel, and will have road taxes added to it.

 

About "tetraethyl lead," it along with better refinery techniques gave use 140 octane aviation fuel for our bombers, fighters, and transports. I made our aircraft engines lighter and powerful to fight the German and Japanese in WW-II.

Bob Wilson

 

The British and Americans used water injection to boost engine performance. The lead did nothing to enhance performance, it simply stopped the knock. Improved combustion chamber design works far better, the Prius engine proves that by running 18:1 compression but can still run 87 octane fuel, although they do run better using 10% ethanol that brings E10 up to 91 octane. After extensive testing, 95 octane and 98 octane fuel achieves the same distance per 50 ltr tank full as E10, so there is no justification for the higher fuel costs associated with using the higher octane fuels.

I designed a water injection system for the turbo charged Nissan 3 ltr motor to allow it to run 14 lb+ on E10 fuel where 98 octane was required to run 10lb boost and running the standard 7lb boost required 95 octane fuel to stop the timing being retarded to stop the knock.
We were running 18lb boost in a crossflow aluminium head pushrod 250 Ford 6 cyl by using water/methanol injection, the owner went to a huge intercooler and did away with the water/methanol injection and promptly lunched the engine on the first 1/4 mile pass ......
As far as water injection creating water gas at point of ignition, levels of hydrogen were seen in the exhaust at full boost on the dyno that weren't there without the water injection .....
I doesn't need to be electrical energy to split water, just energy, heat energy or a mix of the two will work, proven in the steelworks blast furnaces when water leaked into the tuyeres at a greater rate than intended and the flame produced simply cutting a hole around the tuyere and it leaves the base of the blast furnace like a rocket :lol:

T1 Terry

 

Nah, the Prius engine has a pretty standard compression ratio around 9.5:1, and an expansion ratio that is higher. Its Atkinson-inspired design is what allows the expansion and compression ratios to be different.

I had not seen anything as high as 18:1 cited even for the Prius expansion ratio. The early ones I'm sure about were more like 13:1. Maybe a recent generation has increased that and I just haven't caught up yet.

 

A 2024 brochure shows it increased to 14:1, still far far short of 18:
https://www.toyota.com/content/dam/toyota/brochures/pdf/2024/prius_ebrochure.pdf

The brochures for my 2010 (back when it was still 13:1) very clearly labeled this as "expansion" ratio, not "compression" ratio. But by the time I swapped it for a 2012, the proper word "expansion" was gone, Toyota had given in to popular or familiar culture and reverted to the "compression" word.

 

About "tetraethyl lead," it remains in production for general aviation engines that remain common (~200 k global). One refinery on earth still produces it (in Houston as I remember) so Continentals and Lycomings everywhere still drink from there.

2 grams of lead per liter, almost 700 million liters per year, that's a lot of lead. Some of it is poured on the ground at general aviation airports in a ritual called preflight. After lead paint and water pipes are remediated, those where be where lead effects on humans can still be explored.

Water distribution pipes are clearly most of this, but these lead engines have gotten a bit of a free pass for decades. Midgely is not entirely dead.

 

Lead free aviation fuel is under going testing.

 

+1.
I think the title of the thread is accurate, if not the article

Maybe HE should have been on the debate stage a few days ago.....

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