Still no answers? and no, the design flaw is not in the goopy stuff.

it was that the fuel pump is not supposed to be sticking out like I had it. It turns out that under full pressure, it reliefs out of a hole that is on the end by the wiring. I will have to rethink that out a bit more.

Water Injection for Power and Fuel Economy

Everyone wants the best performance out of their vehicle. Joe Shmoe pulls up to a stop and revs his engine, only to get wasted off the line by a family sedan. That’s why Joe puts decals and glass pack mufflers onto his Honda to try to make it faster. Next time he’s at a stop he gets wasted off the line by a moped. Finally Joe gives up his tuning pursuits and goes for a sound system that’s so loud it vibrates all the bolts off. On the other side of the spectrum, there are some who would like to pay less than $500 a week on gas so they drive a two pound foreign sub sub compact that gets 2584.92 miles per gallon. I know that ideally, everyone would like to get a nice mix between these two extremes, except that they would have real performance rather than decals that “add five horsepower each” as the import crowd tends to think. Often, a real tune up to a car is quite costly and involved, like spending several hundred dollars on a turbo or supercharger, or spending several thousand dollars on an engine swap. Finding fuel-improving modifications is almost a mythical thing, and most products available on the market are nothing more than a hoax. Looking at all that is available on the market, one promising looking modification to provide potential power and fuel economy is water injection.
Water injection has been used to greatly improve an engine’s power and performance, but what is water injection? Water is being inserted into something, but what and how? Water can be injected as a stream, mist, or spray, and into any cavity. On a car water could be injected just about anywhere, the intake, the engine, the exhaust, the tires, the cabin, the seats, and anything else on a car.
However, for engine performance, water has been injected as a mist in three different areas, only one pertains to typical cars. When one mentions water injection to tuners, they will immediately think of turbos. It is relatively common for turbo owners to inject water onto their intercooler, which is basically a radiator for air. Air that goes into the intake of a vehicle on a good turbo car will go through an intercooler to cool off. Spraying water on the intercooler will evaporate when it hits it and cools off the air quicker and faster. Cold air is denser air, which means more air is put into the engine. The more air in the engine the more fuel can be added which means the engine produces more power. However this has practicality of use for very few select cars.
Another way of water injection is putting a mist of water into the exhaust. It works the same way as with an intercooler, except its cooling the exhaust manifold, not the intercooler. This has been shown to give horsepower benefits and lower the RPM range where horsepower peaks. However, the only vehicles this has really been tried on were motorcycles, another small group of vehicles.
For most people, they drive a naturally aspired engine, or in other words, a non turbo, non-supercharged engine. It is for this engine water injection will be defined. Water is misted into the intake air, usually at the intake manifold, to be sucked into the combustion chamber (where the pistons are). When the fuel burns, it evaporates the water, cooling off combustion temperatures and gives a pressure boost, as the water is now steam. The water also raises the octane of the fuel and cools the intake air. All this makes for more power and better fuel efficiency, and in cars that most people drive.
Water injection provides a way for Joe Shmoe to get some potential power benefits while, more importantly, keeping fuel consumption low. Every 3000 miles one drives, and their fuel efficiency goes from 20 to 25 miles per gallon, they use 30 gallons of gas less per oil change at about a savings of $60. Water injection has been known to produce even better results for more savings making it a good candidate for engine performance modifications. In fact, water injection can have the benefits on a naturally aspired engine of increased fuel efficiency, more power and torque, and lower emissions by lowering temperatures, increasing air pressure, and raising the octane of the fuel, making it a good idea for amateur car tuners.
The idea of water injection is not a new one. Water injection has been around for a long time, in a matter of speaking, in steam engines, jet aircraft, and some automobiles. The first idea of “water injection” seen in mechanics was the steam engine. Granted steam engines run only on steam, and nothing is actually injected, but it acts on the same principle that will gives water injection its potential for power, and that is its pressure from steam. Steam engines have been very powerful and have powered some large equipment. Steam engines were used for all of the early locomotives, and could pull large payloads of cars. Steam engines were also used to power ferryboats and other large sea fearing vehicles. More recently, the Titanic was powered by large steam engines. These engines weighed about 1000 tons, operated at about 76 rpm, and produced an amazing 16,000 hp that was needed to move such a massive vessel (www.titanic-titanic.com). Therefore it is important not to overlook the potential for added pressure from steam in the combustion chamber of a car running on water injection.
The use of water injection on engines seems to have originated around WWII, and appeared on the various planes in the war. Here, water was injected into mostly turbocharged airplanes to help increase boost on take off and also to help the aircraft’s top speed. The German Messerschmitt K ran on a 1,800 hp DB 605D engine that after it was modified with water-methanol injection ran at 2,000 hp. A variant of the P-51 Mustang ran off of water injection also delivering over 2,000 hp. A version of the Chance Vought F4U Corsair ran on water injection which boosted it’s performance from a top speed of 393 mph to 415 mph. (Hawks). While water injection was popular at this time, it tended to lose favour to afterburners. Water injection is still used to some extent on bigger airplanes. Water injection has been used as recent in commercial aircraft as the Boeing 747-100 (www.twa800.com) as well as being used on military troop transports, one of which actually crashed on take off due to a malfunction in it’s invaluable water injection system (St. Petersburg Times).
While car manufacturers have dabbled a little on water injection (like Volvo), It has been tried by a fair amount of private tuners (with a little more success than Joe Shmoe). Ron Novak was one of the pioneers for water injection, putting it on some of his carbourated vehicles in the late 70’s. He has had success putting water injection on a BMW R60/2 motorcycle, a 1973 Opel GT, a 1968 Cadillac, and a Honda. From his fairly crude home-made water injection, he received a little in the way of power boost, less vibration, had better cold starts in the morning, and saw a 2 mpg increase in his fuel mileage. Another individual that has had much success in water injection is Pat Goodman. He first started putting water into his Porsche racing car. His professionally designed system worked so good to produce power, his water injection system was banned from the racing league he was in. He later put his water injection system onto a 1978 Ford Fiesta and was able to achieve 50 mpg city driving. His professional system had much success in the cars that he installed it on, though he didn’t have the same success in marketing it. Ron’s system involved using parts that you could find around your house and was very limited in terms of control. Pat’s, however, used the smog pump off his vehicles to provide a spray of water into the engine, and the water pressure was variably controlled with the throttle by the smog pump. The latter design was able to maximise the performance and the gas mileage increase as well as deliver a fuel to water ratio that would make for the most efficient burn. (Mother Earth News)
The mechanics of water injection is fairly simple. It is best to look first at the power potential by looking at how steam engines work and produce their power. Steam engines consist of two main components, their boiler, and their piston. Steam is taken from a reservoir and pumped through the boiler. The boiler is basically a fireplace with pipes running through it. The fire in the boiler heats up the water into steam which makes its way under high pressure to the piston where a valve directs the steam from one side of the piston to the other making it oscillate back and forth and, in turn, the piston turns a driveshaft or propeller or whatever it is hooked up to. Steam engines create very high-pressure steam to run high power loads by basic wood or coal fires (www.howstuffworks.com). In an internal combustion engine, temperatures can get up to 2000 degrees Celsius. That means the little water injected into an engine has the potential to create as much pressure as the large amounts of water used in steam engines, as a combustion engine operates at higher temperatures than a boiler.
Besides providing pressure benefits, water can absorb heat very well. It takes 2260 J/g to change water into steam. This absorbs a lot of energy and heat. In an engine, this means that combustion temperatures are lowered by a substantial amount if water is injected into it. As the water absorbs the heat of combustion to turn itself into steam, it keeps the combustion temperatures from spiking. On a temperature vs. time graph, a normal combustion engine would get a huge spike in temperature that would last for a very short time and would look like a sharp mountain. When water is injected into the combustion chamber, it lowers the peak of the mountain and makes it wider, meaning it lowers the total combustion temperatures and extends the time it takes for the combustion cycle to complete. This means the fuel burns longer, cleaner (lower temperature burns produce less emissions), and gives more power. Water injection can be compared to using a double boiler or a baking pan in the oven. These devises gently heat food and extend the cooking times. Without them, if you just throw a turkey right onto a baking rack or burner, it will quickly scorch a small section of the turkey and not cook the rest. That is in a way what happens in an engine without water injection. A quick burn happens which is very inefficient in the burning of the fuel and gives off waste heat, like the burnt turkey, as well as letting some fuel pass right through the engine, like the parts of the turkey that were not cooked. This fuel gets consumed in the catalytic converter where it does no good and provides no power at all. Water injection therefore is very effective in making a better use of the fuel that is available and getting more power from it by a longer, cleaner burn at lower temperatures.
Lower combustion temperatures have more benefits besides fuel benefits. Lower temperatures mean less wear on the engine components. The part of the engine that sees the worst heat are the pistons. The pistons are in contact with the combustion gasses, as well as constantly rubbing against the cylinder walls. They endure the heat of both combustion and friction and can cause big problems if the cylinder walls are not properly lubricated. Lower combustion temperatures can help reduce the stress on these parts of the engine and increase the life of the piston rings and seals, which can be very costly to replace. Lower combustion temperatures also means lower engine temperatures in areas like the exhaust, heads, and valves, all of which are expensive parts to replace. Lower temperatures are also very good for all the bearings and surfaces that rub. If overall engine temperatures are reduced, the life of an engine can be increased by a lot. One could run an engine 200,000 miles before it dies while the same one on water injection could make it o 300,000 miles because of less engine wear.
Water injection can also have its benefits before combustion. Spraying water into the intake of a car will cool the intake temperature a bit. As the water is being sprayed, it would partially evaporate and absorb heat from the air making the air temperature drop. As the air temperature drops, the air will also become denser. Denser air means that you can fit more air into the combustion chamber. The more air you bring in the more gas you can put into the engine and the more power you will get. This is called forced induction and is the same principal turbos and superchargers use, putting more air into the intake. Water injection would be creating a forced induction to some extent.
Water injection raises the octane of the fuel, which opens many doors for performance increases. The octane of the fuel is in a way the measure of how easy the fuel will spontaneously ignite under compression, or knock in an engine. The octane of fuel comes from the hydrocarbon chain of molecules, octane. It doesn’t spontaneously combust easily, while heptain, another fuel combusts easily. Gasses for vehicles are combinations of the two. 87-octane fuel is 87% octane and 13% heptain. Lower octane fuel, while under very high pressure will spontaneously combust, thus making a knock in the engine. High-octane fuel has a higher flash point and wont combust as easily under high pressure. Therefore, the benefit of high-octane fuel is that you can increase the compression ratio of the engine and/or increase boost on a forced induction engine like turbocharged or supercharged engines (www.howstuffworks.com). Since the focus of this discussion is on naturally aspirated engines, higher-octane fuel has one main benefit. The timing of the engine, that is when in the combustion cycle the spark plugs are fired, can be advanced to create a more powerful burn. Engines are timed early so that the plugs fire before the pistons compress the air and fuel mix to the max. This is done to prevent knocking in the engine or predetination of the fuel. In that respect, most cars on the road are intentionally underpowered. Advancing the timing detonates the fuel when it’s under even more pressure than normal and creates more power. Adding water into the fuel effectively raises its flash point, or the temperature at which the fuel will spontaneously combust. This raises the octane of the fuel and allows for advancing the timing and receiving a performance increase. Fig. 1 shows the pressure benefits from using water injection at nine degrees advanced timing (green line) compared to the normal combustion cycle (yellow line). (www.aquamist.co.uk).
On the money side of the discussion, anyone running an older vehicle that needs higher octane fuel, or anyone running a high performance vehicle like a Corvette where the factory recommends higher octane fuel, can run their cars off of low octane fuel if they are using water injection and not suffer any performance decreases. At a ten cents a gallon saving from low-grade gas over mid grade, this can add up to large savings at the pump.
Water injection can also help to decrease exhaust emissions. Often, unless the vehicle is burning oil, the problem spot for passing emissions is in the nitrous oxide levels. Water injection works to decrease engine temperatures, which therefore decreases nitrous oxide levels. Nitrous oxide is often made in combustion at very high temperatures. Lowering the temperatures of combustion lower the possibility of the fuel forming nitrous oxide and emitting it in the exhaust. Water injection does, however, raise the hydrocarbon levels just slightly. Therefore, water injection on an oil burner is not a good idea if it needs to pass state emissions. (www.faqs.com)
The real life benefits to the end user are many. The power increases from water injection can very greatly from engine to engine. First it depends on the amount of power the engine has to start out with. A 50-hp engine will not (easily) increase its horsepower by 150. However, an engine that has 400 hp to start can more feasibly increase its hp by 150. On a Fiero engine, which is a four-cylinder engine with around 90-horse power, one could expect a feasible increase of 20-horse power, by any means, not necessarily water injection. Another factor that would influence how much power increase water injection provides is if the engine it is on has forced induction. If it does, water injection will benefit it much more than an engine that doesn’t have forced induction, as the water injection decreases the intake air temperature greatly acting like and intercooler. Another aspect that influences the power benefits from water injection is the type of water injection kit. If it is a professional one, there is high probability for power increase. If the kit is a hobbled together five-cent concoction, it probably won’t provide much power benefit. Therefore, it is very hard to estimate the performance benefits from a water injection system. On a Fiero, one could expect from a mid quality kit performance increase in the 5 to 10 horse power range. For practical purposes, this would mean the car can go up a gill easier or pass a car on the highway easier.
The same factors and variables that affect power increases from water injection also affect fuel mileage increases from water injection. Again looking at a Fiero, it would be reasonable that from a mid quality water injection system, one could attain 3-4 mpg increase in fuel mileage, since Ron Novak could gain 2 mpg increase from a very amateur water injection system (Novak). The Fiero gets around 22-mpg city driving. Every 3000 miles, about 136 gallons of gas are consumed. At $2 a gallon, that comes to $272 worth of gas every 3000 miles. 3000 miles is used in the approximation, as that is the mileage driven between oil changes. If the fuel mileage were increased to 26 miles per gallon by water injection, every 3000 miles about 115 gallons of gas are consumed. At $2 a gallon, that’s $230 of gas every oil change for a savings of $42 every oil change.
One can look at it another way. A Fiero has a 10-gallon tank. That means that at 22 miles per gallon, the car can travel 220 miles. At $2 a gallon the tank of gas is $20 and costs about 9 cents per mile. Now look at the cost with water injection. A tank of gas now lasts 260 miles at 26 miles per gallon. This comes to about 7.7 cents per mile. Looking at the life of a car, a good car will go 200,000 miles. At 9 cents per mile that comes to $18,000 spent on gas for the car. With water injection, 200,000 at 7.7 cents per mile comes to $15,400 for gas. That’s a savings of $2,600 worth of gas! That is enough to have a good down payment on a new car.
Another money factor to look at is the savings in gas money from driving on lower octane fuel. Currently in Waukesha, WI, the difference between low and mid grade gas can be 10 cents. If all fuel mileage benefits of water injection are ignored and not calculated, a Fiero would use 136 gallons of gas every 3000 miles. Saving 10 cents on every gallon by using low grade as opposed to mid grade gives a savings of $13.6 from using water injection. That is assuming that the water injection has not improved fuel economy. Over the life of the car, 200,000 miles at 22 miles per gallon (or 9090.9 gallons) one still saves $909.09. Assuming now that water injection does increase fuel efficiency, every oil change (or115 gallons of gas) one still would save $11.5 on gas by running off of a lower octane fuel. This means that over the life of the car (7692.3 gallons at 26 miles per gallon) one saves $769.23. If this is added to the $2,600 saved from improved gas mileage, $3,369.23 is saved over the life of the car.
Whether water injection only gives an octane boost or if it also improves fuel mileage, one can save large amounts of money. Over the life of a Fiero, that could be between $900 and $3300. This figure doesn’t even take into account all the money that could be saved from lower repair costs due to less engine wear that water injection provides. Having to rebuild an engine can be costly, $2000-$3000 dollars. It also doesn’t take into account how much can be saved by running a car for longer, with out having to replace it. With less wear on the engine from cooler combustion temperatures, an engine could last 300,000 miles if taken care of on water injection compared to the same engine getting 200,000 miles not water injected. If one puts on 15,000 miles per year that’s six years and 8 months longer that a water injected car could last as opposed to one that’s not water injected. That could save lots of money by not having to buy a new car as soon.
It’s important now to look at the practicality of water injection. Water injection can give marginal performance increases for the normal vehicle, but its main benefit is improved gas mileage. This is important to some, but not everyone is concerned about it as is evident by the number of Hummers one can see driving on the road. Gas mileage can have a very important influence however on businesses and the government who operate under a strict budget. For business, transportation companies can benefit greatly, as well as airline companies, as water injection was use in aviation engines even before being used in cars. Airline companies would decrease their annual spending on gas and save money, which in their current economic situation, airline companies need to do. On the government end, public transportation could benefit greatly from water injection. Buses usually run around the clock with no one inside them, so if anyone needs to conserve fuel, it is them. While water injection has not been used much in diesel engines (buses use diesel engines), which operate a little different from gasoline engines, it has been experimented with by various people with similar results as gas engines. Boats use gasoline engines just like cars, so they could benefit greatly from water injection just as cars can. So whether one drives a car, truck, motorcycle, bus, plane, or boat, all can benefit from water injection, making it a very practical technology.
The economic impacts of water injection are vast. Water injection could potentially boost sales of SUV’s and other gas hungry vehicles at little cost to manufacturers (a top of the line water injection kit runs for around $300), while it could hurt their service department since vehicle reliability would increase. On the other hand, adding another system to a car adds another part that could fail, but mostly water injection would decrease the service business on engines since the price of replacing a water injection system is very little compared to rebuilding an engine. Over all improved gas mileage of the average vehicle would decrease the nation’s fuel consumption and decrease its dependence on foreign oil, which may decrease the desire to tax gas and slow down the upward spiral of gas prices. If water injection gains popularity, it would boost sales and revenue of companies that produce water injection kits, like Aquamist. Since consumers are spending less money on gas, which goes to foreign wallets, they would be spending their money on other things and putting it back into the American economy.
Looking at all the data and benefits of water injection, it is easy to see it being the next direction that engines will go. As gas prices increase and gas supply decreases, consumers will be looking at alternatives to the current standards. Alternate fuels like E-85 and hydrogen are a long way off from being commonly used, and are expensive to change over to. With this in mind, water injection is a nice stepping stone between normal gasoline combustion engines and alternate fuel vehicles of the future. Water injection therefore is important to consumers now, giving them increased gas mileage and more power, as well as being important in smoothing the path toward progress and the technology of the future.

Works Cited
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Military crash with out water injection

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