Water-Alcohol Vapor Infusion System ( EWAI )

What is the theory behind how this works to get better mpg's. Also what is the impact on emission?

 

What exactly does it do and would it later cause a scene at the dealer ship


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This isn't new technology.
Water injection (engines) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'll wait and see.
I'm thinking that the people in Aichi, Japan are pretty smart, and we already KNOW that they market the Prius by fuel efficiency numbers - which is probably one of the reasons that the MDF is optimistic by 5-10 percent.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I can't help but believe that if they could increase the real-world efficiency of the Prius by 5-percent just by bolting $50 worth of hardware onto the car they would be allllllll over it like a bum on a bologna sandwich!!!
Besides....if they bought in quantity?
We're probably only talking about $10 worth of stuff.


I DO believe that ethanol injection is going to be a viable technology for very small displacement ICEs....and right now the bigs are tinkering with it, but I'm a little skeptical about suddenly getting 5-10 more fuel efficiency in a G3 without doing evil things in your crankcase.

We'll see........

 

You can't test it if you want accurate data. Someone will have to do blind test.

 

you got my attention, my son-in-law has a guy at his shop that made a "bucket hydrogen generator" and is getting 4-5 more MPG on an old ford pickup. I toyed with this idea but can't find the room for it plus I think it would freeze here in the winter.

 

Interesting. An air pump like this could be used instead of relying on the "forced air intake" in your system.

 

toyota wouldn't do it because they are not going to ask people to put water and alchohol in a tank every how often? i guess it could work, but i don't see enough details.

 

There will not be gains in efficiency with the Prius. You are spraying water and some combustible stuff into your cylinders. The Prius doesn't understand there is water in there, but you are taking away air and increasing the compression to the point that the power output will drop. Because the Prius' engine is not directly coupled to a transmission it is harder to sense this power drop in normal driving because the MG's will pick up the slack.

Doing this continually is probably not a wise idea. There are 2 main reasons. Firstly, such a high compression ratio in the Prius is not smart. It was not designed for that. Even if there was an efficiency gain, is that worth it to have your engine explode in a few years?

The second reason this is a very bad idea especially for the Prius is because you can hydrolock your engine. Water does not compress, that is basis for all hydraulics. Put too much water in the cylinder, and now you seize the engine and you have a very costly repair or replacement bill. Now the Prius is a special beast that can turn its engine on or off even when the car is moving. Normal cars, the engine is always going. So spraying a stream of crap into the cylinders will always be blown out. In the Prius, you are just soaking it when stopped, when then engine is off, or the worst case scenario is when you are moving above 42mph and the engine is spinning but with no combustion!!!! This is Prius specific and means you are in very dangerous territory.

And Oldsmobile did this in the early 60's. Their Cutlass "Jetfire" model had a "Turbo-Rocket Fluid" reservoir. That was essentially this. 50/50 water and alcohol of some kind. But it's big engine used it for cooling and higher compression for more power. It had no computers tuning it, and so it works. This will not end will if it remains in your Prius.

 

He's not putting water into the engine, it's water and alcohol vapors . Big difference.

SCH-I535

 

What do you think vapours are? Ice, water, steam, it is all H2O and all not compressible.

 

I'd think that the Atkinson-cycle engine is an uniquely bad candidate for water injection precisely because the Atkinson-cycle engine aims to be thermally efficient in its operation.

Disregarding water's anti-knock properties (which would only be relevant in an engine prone to knock, which might mean a craptacular one, or one that is designed to be running at extreme compression i.e. race engine), the idea behind water injection is that the water salvages some of the wasted thermal energy of combustion by turning into a gas and expanding in volume (read: added powering) during the power stroke.

But the whole idea of the Atkinson-cycle engine is so that it has a longer effective power stroke, so that the added room for gas expansion doesn't just throw away the remaining energy (in the form of remnant exhaust heat/pressure) in the exhaust of an Otto cycle. So there isn't much heat energy to salvage.

(The relatively low level of waste heat in the exhaust is also why Atkinson-cycle engines need to pay special attention to putting the catalytic converter really close to the engine, and insulating it.)

The way I see it, the best case scenario is that the water salvages a meager amount of heat energy, and the alcohol adds as a fuel. Worst case scenario is that the cat is hindered from lighting off. And I have no idea what water in the cat (which persists because it never gets warm enough) would do to it.

 

Now that I read the OP again.... Jeebus Christ. There is no high pressure pump nor something to aerosolize the fluid. This is going to end badly.

 

Again, the liquid water is not going in the engine. Just, possibly, vapors.

I'm skeptical that enough vapors make it into the intake to even make a noticeable difference. But who knows?

All anyone can do is speculate all day long. This individual is actually using an implementation of it and, hopefully, will post results.

 

I foresee this thread getting vaporized into thin air.

 

Here's an easy way to think about this "system".

You know what a water pipe or bong is? This is pretty much the same thing, except there is only air going in, and instead of just water in the bong, there is the water/alcohol/alcohol mixture. Then what you have coming out is the original air plus, possibly some water and alcohol vapors.

When someone uses a water pipe or bong, they are definitely not "inhaling" liquid, just "vapors".

 

It's probably easier to think of this system after a water pipe or bong.....

 

I just knew that one was coming.

 

YET ANOTHER READ of the OP confirms what you're saying. This is indeed the automotive equivalent of a bong. Still a *facepalm* from me, though. Let's hope no sloshing of the tank will allow a significant amount of water to get capillaried and pushed into the intake.

 

Well, that's what makes the PriusChat community so interesting, huh? We can have discussions on automotive applications of bongs and wheel balancing beads.