50-75% improved fuel economy news story... 'supercritical fuel inejctors'
 

interesting, what do you guys make of this?

Technology Review India: Videos


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This dude is smoking the crack pipe.

I have seen tens of these types of devices... but when you tell them that you would like to run them in your Lab they say no..."we are still not at that stage".

This is essentially doing what Direct port Injection does... Bringing fuel at a higher temperature and pressure, so when it exits the injector its rapid de compression atomizes the fuel to minimize fuel droplets... The less fuel droplets or the smaller, the better the mixture the less energy is required for ignition.

Problem is the whole 50-75% efficiency increase... its like everything in life, provide less fuel and a leaner combustion you will increase thermal efficiency, but your power output will decrease... So while you can get 65mpg your original power number has been cut by 25-40%. Does it matter, well depends on what you want out of your vehicle.

Personally while i think its decent technology, The claims he presented where a little far fetched. We tested a similar method of injection at high pressure at the lab, and only saw 3-4% improvement in thermal efficiency, with a 10hp drop.

Unfortunately the nature of the combustion engine is that of 60-70% thermal loss. Unless you can figure out how to use materials in the cylinder block, and pistons who are prone to heat change (meaning they do not warm up) this will always be an issue... Audi back in 2000-2001 tested a ceramic engine to minimize the heat losses. Never heard what happened with that testing.

when i see "india" it reminds me of the census guy that kept coming back over and over again to my house to see if i was really Asian.

I'd bet pretty good money the ceramic material didn't hold up to vibration testing.

Porsche used ceramic intake inserts on the 944 turbo engine. They were prone to rattling due to differing heat characteristics.