Two questions concerning water injection.

[Robert Harris]

RE: Water before turbo and intercooler.  A MODEST amount will vaporize and
not recondense (temp/dew point/humidity sort of thing) but since the
intercooler
is designed for dry air flow, any significant amount will separate out.  Be
safe 
inject after intercooler if you are going for more than a "Cool Foggy
Morning"
effect. Kind of a guide line - almost every engine works better at 100 per
cent
humidity at the temp and pressure of the valve inlet. Going past that
involves
keeping liquid water entrained in the air flow and you will have separation

problems.

RE STEAM:  The major by-product of gasoline combustion is STEAM - about
2 gallons of water created for every gallon of gasoline burned. Small
amounts
of water will be "lost in the noise" and larger amounts seem to simply
replace
combustion generated steam with water injected steam.

The consensus is that a MODEST amount of water will help ping and knock,
increase the octane of the mixture to allow optimum timing and increase the
charge density, thus being beneficial to allowing the engine to perform
closer to peak. Adding 
more seems to become an extremely iffy thing and unless a lot of work is
done
may actually reduce power.   

Have fun at the cutting edge of flame warfare.

If the first ingredient ain't Habanero, then the rest don't matter.
Robert Harris <bob at bobthecomputerguy.com>


----------
> From: John Bertram <bertram at teleport.com>
> To: DIY_EFI at coulomb.eng.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Two questions concerning water injection.
> Date: Wednesday, April 30, 1997 12:11 AM
> 
> I have two questions after reviewing past articles from the diy-efi
archives.
> 
> These both concern turbocharged engines.
> 
> First, if you add the water before the turbo, the water will obviously be
> well stirred up by the compressor wheel.  I have a large intercooler on
my
> car.  My question is... Will the water have a tendency to condense and
> puddle in the bottom of the intercooler as the charge air is cooled?
> 
> Second, when the air/fuel/water mixture burns in the combustion chamber,
> does the water turn to steam?  If it does, the steam is obviously being
> created by some of the energy that would be lost as heat.  Since steam
> takes up a lot more space than water, wouldn't that create a lot more
> exhaust volume?  Would this extra volume of exhaust be useful in spooling
> up the turbo quicker?
> 
> 
> John Bertram, Technician
> Garry Small Saab
> Volvo Turbo APC project (www.teleport.com/~bertram)
> '87 Volvo 740 Turbo Sedan
> '66 Rover TC 2000
> '70 Toyota Corona Mk.I