Smokey Yunick Hot Vapor Cycle Engine

[ShadowWorks]

Originally Posted by MarkM68

I think the fact that the HVC engine has to use a carb makes it obsolete for a modern car, as he couldn't get it to meet emisions standards.

I would imagine that the emissions would have been lower, less hydrocarbon out that back end?

[GasSavers_Binary]

Originally Posted by ShadowWorks

Is the water injection or HHO gas expanding in the cylinders creating steam power of a sort?

The water injection supresses detonation so you can run your engine in conditions where it would otherwise detonate without it., I can't speak for the HHO because I know very little about it.

[GasSavers_RoadWarrior]

Originally Posted by Binary

The water injection supresses detonation so you can run your engine in conditions where it would otherwise detonate without it., I can't speak for the HHO because I know very little about it.

To my thinking a little bit of steam may make the systems self tuning to a certain extent, as I suspect that HHO makes for very rapid flame front development, which may otherwise require timing retard.

[dkjones96]

I was working on a direct injection system that goes through the exhaust valve face. Is this anything similar? The goal was to have the fuel heated past its flash point by the time you're injecting it.

On a 2 valve engine though, by the time you've gotten enough bore in the valve to flow what you need for a typical engine at WOT and all fuel injected within about 20 degrees of crank rotation you've lost too much structural integrity in the valve. The only way to do it would have a low revving 4 valve head and I don't have the resources to build and test that.

[MarkM68]

Originally Posted by dkjones96

I was working on a direct injection system that goes through the exhaust valve face. Is this anything similar? The goal was to have the fuel heated past its flash point by the time you're injecting it.

On a 2 valve engine though, by the time you've gotten enough bore in the valve to flow what you need for a typical engine at WOT and all fuel injected within about 20 degrees of crank rotation you've lost too much structural integrity in the valve. The only way to do it would have a low revving 4 valve head and I don't have the resources to build and test that.

The flash point of gasoline is -40 degrees.

[dkjones96]

Originally Posted by MarkM68

The flash point of gasoline is -40 degrees.

Eh, probably should have said 'ignition temperature' not 'flash point'.

[quadancer@bellsouth.net]

Awesome thread; I think Smokey had detractors much like our HHO detractors of today. It amazes me how many post redundant comments without studying even a little on it...and it's always the same old debunked arguments.

On a 2 valve engine though, by the time you've gotten enough bore in the valve to flow what you need for a typical engine at WOT and all fuel injected within about 20 degrees of crank rotation you've lost too much structural integrity in the valve. The only way to do it would have a low revving 4 valve head and I don't have the resources to build and test that.

It sounds to me like for FE, we don't need super high revs, so could not the valve stems be any size? And for light weight, titanium.

[dosco]

So I went and found Somkey's patent on the "hot air carburator."

A couple of questions.

1. How do you ensure the fuel-air ratio is correct? I would think this invention would have some issues if trying to adapt to a FI engine, OTOH perhaps modifying the control laws in the ECU could make it work.

2. Is the intake charge cooled after the fuel is introduced? I've read about turbo-era F1 cars that didn't have adequate intercooling which lead to engine failure.

3. If the intake charge is cooled, wouldn't the fuel condense? The patent even explains how previous versions of the hot air vapor system had problems after the engine was shutoff and the fuel condensed whne the engine cooled down.

Anywas, seems like Smokey was one of those with innate engineering skills. I worked with a guy like that in my last job - no engineering degree but brilliant/gifted.

[dkjones96]

Originally Posted by quadancer@bellsouth.net

It sounds to me like for FE, we don't need super high revs, so could not the valve stems be any size? And for light weight, titanium.

Yes and no. The valve has to conduct heat so titanium is out of the question. Now that I look back on my work I don't know why I didn't think to use a supplemental port injection system for when the revs get up there. No way around spark ignition for part of the engines operating range except cruise and part-throttle acceleration.

When I think of an invention, I think OEM. Honestly, if it can't be OEM in something I usually give it to someone else to pursue. OEM is where you can make the biggest difference in the world and is where I plan to go when I finish my PHd in ME.

[GasSavers_Scott]

Back in the late 70's there was either a Popular Science or Mechnics Illustrated cover art of the Hot Air Engine. From the patent photo's I'v seen, you start at the carburator, the atomised fuel mixture goes through a water heater exchanger and reaches 180 degrees, from there it goes into the low psi turbo at 1 to 4 lbs of boost, then it goes into an exhaust heat exchanger reaching an amaising 480 degrees. At this point it reaches a pure gaseous state.

A carburator atomises fuel, so do fuel injectors, but if you have seen the inside engine slow motion of a Ford V6, even with fuel injection the mixture is a sloppy wet mess that barely burns 50% of the spinning droplets. A cubic inch of water expands 1600 times when super heated. By using this concept, fuel in a gaseous form will burn more efficiently than in an atomised form.

If you check out Geet Pantone, he made a fuel superheater that feed the exhaust back into the engine via a bubbler, filled with variable fuels. Using this methode, a modern fuel injected engine would need a super heater per cylinder to take advantage of modern computer fuel injection. This way, what comes out the exhaust is still read by the O2 sensor and the injectors can correct for fuel/air ratio.

How powerful will this engine be? Not as powerful as a room temp engine, I think that's why Smokey added the turbo chager. If you have some spare time there's plans to make a fuel super heater from Geet Pantone on-line that can be adapted to a lawn mower, that way the home experimentor can play around with a working model to prove the concept.

Shell and Europe run those little cars that get 2000 to 6000 mpg in marathons. The rules give you 40 laps and your speed can't drop below 18 mph with one measured gallon of gasoline. Now finding info on the cars is toough, everyone wan't to keep their secret's of the mpg designs. I did however get to see one of the cars running without it's aerodynamic shell and it ran a 35 cc single cylinder engine. It had a bubbler in a quart of fuel, drawing into an intake, which went into a foil wrapped super heater off the exhaust pipe. Essentially the fuel started out as a drawn vapor, going into a super heater and becoming a gas.

Well there's the concept and the application, I know these engines are murderously cold blooded taking 15 minutes of heating before you can drive down the road to avoid a stall. I'v read some of the guys here at Gassaver experimenting with EFIE's can run so lean their engines cut out. The technology is close to 40 years old, some patents like Geet Pantone sold their patents to MIT just to have the technology sat on. So like I'v said before there's no money to be made in this, the technology has to be given away for free, so the world can experiment with it and evolve together.