Gasification

[Edward Hernandez R]

   I'm aware of at least one attempt to prepare a true vaporized mixture. This attempt used a carburetor, an exhaust driven heat exchanger and a turbocharger. As someone already mentioned, the carb does a decent job of atomizing the fuel when you can't hit a hot intake valve. The heat exchanger vaporized the mixture, but also heated it(increasing knock tendency) and dropped it's density. The turbo was used to maintain density which, at elevated temperatures, also raised it's pressure. I can't recall whether it was a draw through or blow through set-up, but I strongly suspect it was blow through. Some pretty impressive numbers were obtained for performance and fuel economy. I would like to have seen much more data, such as MBT timing, octane sensitivity, and BSFC. It was presented to the Big Three, who dismissed the idea for a variety of reasons, all of which disgusted the inventor. His name was Smokey Yunick, about whose reputation I have mixed feelings. I don't know whether he patented this idea, but I read


 about it it the 80's. No pressure was given, so no one knows if performance was related to boost or vaporization(hence, my desire for real data). There is a myriad of unanswered questions, which is makes everyone skeptical.
  Has anyone heard of this since? 

PS: cracking intake valves with fuel is difficult since they are continuously cooled by charge air and fuel; they don't nearly an hot as exhaust valves. Perhaps it's possible after an extreme hotsoak.

Ed Hernandez
ehernan3 at ed8719.pto.ford.com