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.