A Fuel Vaporizer for a B&S Engine.

[Bob]

 I have an Idea that has been rattleing around in my head for a while.
I was thinking of attaching a 1/2" thredded pipe to the exhost of a 3.5 B&S engine and wrapping 1/4"
copper tubing down its length, and go stright to the intake via a needle valve.
 at the end of the exhost pipe an elbow with another length of pipe that has a manifold over it to capture the heat to pre-heat the intake air.... ducting this air into the motors intake should keep the vaporized gasoline in vapor form... and I could run for HOURS on a pint of gas !
2 valves will be needed, one for the vaporized gasoline on the 1/4" line.
and one for the intake air to act as a throttle...
a check valve in the gas line may be needed to keep the gas going in the right direction,and not stop the flow of fuel. or just let it bubble back into the gas tank and have no pressure to the line
that way the only fuel to inter the line will be the amount used by the valve as it is running the engine.( after it is running anyway... upon warm up it would bubble back into the gas tank for a while)
...
so the manifold I have made for the GEET reactor could be used to heat the incomeing air
and the fuel can be vaporized by a copper tube...
....
.... I wonder if it will work ?
...
Bob...

[crb]

Bob
Keep a pyrometer handy!
crb

[Bob]

I ain't gotz one of them thingies ! 
but I use the old standby, lick a finger and touch it breefly... if it Sizzels its HOT
if it just evaporates slowly its just warm !
if your finger-print stays on the thing its REALLY REALLY HOT ! and you best not test it again !
 LOL !
...
Bob.....
P.S. another indicator of something being really hot is your finger is slick after the test!
hehehehehehehehe

[Bob]

Well, I took the Geet Reactor Off the little B&S today and added a Pipe to the exhost outlet port and used a bell reducer to go from 1/2" threds on the motor to 1" pipe about 12" long.
on the intake I just took off the stuff above the ball valve and left it at that...
when I buy some 1/4" copper tubing (I'm all out of it it seams!) I'll wrap a goodly length around the exhost pipe and put a valve on the line just before the end and then add a short piece to go to the open end of the ball valve on the intake side.
... I want to try it with just that and see if it works without having to add the HOT airto the intake... I figure it probably won't take much hot air, but I could be wrong . if my Dodge truck is any indication of the needed heat for the intake I will need a big heater to make it work !
... but if it works fine without it, there is no sense in adding heat to an already hot running engine !
...
That's the plan anyway... I figure on starting it with quick-start and then adjust the gas valve
to get it to run on raw fuel... then as it warms up it will more than likely boil the gas out of the coils and flood the engine with too much gas.... but once that part is over it should run on 100% vapor..... but we shall see.
 the amount I have to have the gas valve open should be an indicator of if the Vapor is condensing back into gasoline in the intake or not......
I know when My pinto was running on 100% vaporized gas the valve was only 1/4 turn open
....so this thing will be only cracked open at the most !
....
Bob...

[crb]

Bob,
FYI I have the harbor freight 91778, It works
pretty slick.
crb

[Manta]

...I know when My pinto was running on 100% vaporized gas....

A bit of local news. I had a pinto engine that I removed from a Ford Cortina some years ago. It looked like a possible candidate for hydroxy experiments.  Until yesterday when I found out some one has stolen it out the yard; along with some steel radiators that were to be used in the shed.

Damn these scrap metal thieves. I hope they dropped a bo**ock lugging it over the fence.

If it's steel and it's heavy you have to tie it down these days. At £100 per ton you can see why they do it.

Manta

[Bob]

WOW ! if those boys were big enough to lug a cortina over the fence they can have it ! I wouldn't complane one bit ! LOL !
....oh you mean the radiators.... <GRIN> hehehe well shows to go ya if it ain't nailed down it will dissapear ! ...  we have the same problem here !
....
...
I spent all morning luggin the wife around getting her on the shuttle for vacation with her Mom.... and I remembered the copper tubeing all the time untill I was in the store.... wouldn't ya know I came out without it and didn't think of it till I was 1/2 way home ! PHITTTT!
oh well next trip I'll get it !
...
Bob.....

[Bob]

*******************************************************************

I posted this on the wrong topic.... must'a been asleep ! HAHAHHA
....
I came home the other day with 25ft of 1/4" copper tubing , so I made about 10 or 12 wraps around the exhaust pipe on the B&S 3.5hp and put a needle valve on the business end pointing into the intake ball valve on the intake side...
....

well, I jerry rigged up a plastic bottle for a gastank and got the engine to run for a bit
and about the time it got hot enough to start spitting out vapor it died and then flooded the engine forth-with before I could shut off the valve.... I got it to run 2 or 3 times thereafter but my mixture wasn't right and couldn't keep it running, and after 2 blisters on my right hand from pulling so much I desided to give it a rest ! LOL !
...
from the looks of things as the gasoline turns to vapor I need to increase the fuel flow quite a bit...  I was too slow.... on the truck its not that hard to add a bit more and keep it running but with one cylinder its gott'a be done FAST ! HAHAHHAHHA!
 I am guessing that is because the gasoline has expanded so much that it needs more volume to keep running...
...
the back pressure in the line to the bottle made the plastic cap split a bit so I had to make a quick repair on it with black tape before I could try it again, and by then all the gas in the coil was turned to vapor... and it was trying to bubble back into the container... so I cracked open the valve and really flooded the engine ! DUH !  a few shots of quick start and opening the air valve got it to fire up again, but my fuel was coming in spirts by then and I had had enough of yanking that starter rope for a while ! HAHAHAHHAHAH
...
I'll try it again in the morning and be fast on the valve !....and Hopefully I can get it past the transition stage where some gas is vapor and some isn't... that's hard to do in the truck some times , you have to know where that valve needs to be before it gets easy ! and right now I have no idea where it has to be at !...but at least the truck has an electric starter ! WHEW!
LOL
...
as I was coiling the 1/4" copper tubing around the 1" pipe I have for the exhaust pipe, it was flattening out fairly bad....( that's a real tight turn for that tubing!) but when I got done I could blow through it with very little resistance so I figured I'ed try it and see what I got!
...
...sense gasoline expands some 16 times when it turns into Vapor form and then 600 to 900 times when ignited ( vapor or atomized gas) the possibility of 16 times the gas mileage has always intrigued me .  but the problem that most guys that mess with fuel vaporization don't realize is that the avarage car does a real good job at atomization of the fuel... some portion even turns into vapor ! but not all...
 a few car companies were bragging that their carberators were so advanced that 98% of the fuel was vaporized.... and that is a bunch of bunk ! they would be hard pressed to reach 50% MAX.
....
so at 50% (if that much) and the car gets 32mpg the other 50% would result in only 64mpg !  and I got 80MPG from my ford pinto back in the early 1980's.... so you can see that they Lie big time!
 ...Personally I think 25% vapor is giving them allot of lee-way
at 25% and they get 32mpg the other 75% turned to vapor would get them an additional 96mpg,for a total of 128mpg... so the reality of it all is probably somewhere around 8~10% is actually vaporized.... so any car would benifit from fuel vaporization.... if we can just get it wo work !
HAHAHAHHA
Bob....

[Bob]

Another Aspect of this makes me wonder about its validity... as I mentioned that as the fuel vaporized I have to increase the valve opening to keep it running, this is the nature of all 3 of the vaporizers I have built, (if not 4 of them) its a must to have to increase the volume of gas or it will stagger and die on you....
and its quite reasonable if you think about the gasoline is expanding 16 times (at a minimum)...
and its harder to get through the small opening so you are getting at least 16 times Less fuel...
so unless you open the valve it runs lean and dies....
... but ... if I have to open the valve say 16 times the volume it had before the vapor started...
am I not using the same amount of fuel in the process and  if I have to use 16 times MORE vapor to get the engine to run than I would Liquid Gasoline doesn't that do away with ALL the MPG gains ?
   I Know for a fact that I got 80mpg out of my ford pinto ages ago using a water heated vaporization system.... and if that is the case then WHERE is the EXTRA MPG coming from ?
I realize vapor burns much better, cleaner and all that...some even clame a HP increase but I don't because I've never really seen an increase in HP, in fact a slight decrease was noticed by me ....
 so vapor burns better, that's a given... but that is not enough to increase the mileage from 30~31mpg up to 80~85MPG. is it ?...I hardly think so...
...so the expansion of the liquid into the vapor form must account for at least part of the MPG gain.   so even if I have to increase the valve when the vapor starts showing up I must not be opening it up anywhere near the 16 times as Logic would tell us that needs to be done in order to get the engine to run good.
  so in effect vapor allows us to run the engine much leaner...and still have the engine run!
...this makes sense if you think about the way Vapor explodes as compared to a fuel air mist
...vapor goes Bang, a fuel air mix goes Whooosh ! (hehehe lack of better explanation of terms!)
...this is the exact same thing Hydroxy gas does in the engine... and why the timing is changed on many engines to get it to run real good and not ping... Hydroxy gas makes the fuel air mix explode much faster than usual...
....
  I must remember to change the timing on my Dodge truck ! should I ever play with the vaporizer again ! HAHAHHAHA
....
what do you guys think ?   am I reading too much into it ?
...
Bob......

[Bob]

The Fundamental problem with fuel vaporization :
According to our scientests, the effeciency of an engine can be expressed by the ratio of the heat IN to the heat OUT....
so if you want to increase the efficiency of an engine you make the intake colder and the exhaust hotter ...
this is the Opposite of what the vaporization process does Vaporization actually will heat up the intake temperature...and therefore will lower the over all engines efficiency.... this is very true !
 However if you can achieve 80mpg from a 31mpg car Who cares if the engine lost 20~25% of its HP in the process ?   ... so this is the main argument you will hear on fuel vaporization...
...
 what this means is that we get hung up on technicalities on the phisical nature of the running of gasoline engines...and miss the point entirely !
...
...its all about Gas Mileage not about horsepower...
...
if it were other wise, Drag racers would get the best gas mileage of any engine out there, their 1500HP for a v8 I.C.Engine is about as efficient as you can get.... yet they drink fuel at an astounding rate !
so its not the efficiency of an engine that determines gas mileage.
...
according to 3 or 4 patents I have looked at most of them clam very close to 200MPG with their vaporizer system... and I do not doubt it at all.
if you can get it to work and keep it working all the time you should indeed get 200mpg on 100% gasoline vapor...if not more.
  However, I have been working on Fuel vaporization systems for long enough to recognize a scam when I see one ! and there are ALLOT of scams out there!
...
  Like the Very first Woodgas producers the design doesn't have to be real complicated in order to work...... the neatest one I ever saw was a metal box with an exhaust pipe going through it and a float valve for fuel in the box...
that's it !... the guy calmed 200mpg!
...
and although many people tried to copy his unit very few ever succeed, if any.
... but the idea has stuck in my mind for decades...
...
we must remember that the first Jet engines did not use vaporized fuel to run
but they Guzzled fuel so fast as to make the engine useless!
later development of a fuel vaporization system for the jet engine made the jet engine usable..... so if its been used on jet engines all this time why is it not being used on the internal combustion engine ?...
the answer to that is simple...MONEY ! ...
  ....
Fuel Vaporization does indeed work, its just getting it to work on the I.C. Engine...  I was reading on a Fuel vaporization site one time that a fella was making a bolt on unit to replace the carburetor that was powered by the exhaust heat....and was planning on selling them to the public... by now I amagon the Oil companies shut him down... but it was a grand gesture never the less.  but the modification of the cars exhaust system is beyond most people
and would be very expensive to have done for you at a muffler shop. but it is possible.
...the more people that work on Fuel vaporization the better our chances are of coming up with a good viable method of making it work on our cars.
...I don't have that method yet but I believe its within my grasp now... its just getting around to it again!

....Vaporize the gasoline with exhaust heat and Keep it vaporized by using exhaust heat when it enters the intake... this takes at least 110deg to 120 degree hot air... at a incredible volume ! but if you can do it you will achieve 200mpg or better.... and I think that's worth some tinkering!
(sounds like a tractor project to me ! LOL)
...
Bob.....
 

[Bob]

here is a pic of what I was fooling with....
ment to post it ages ago.... sorry about that !
...
What I experienced with this setup was inconclusive....so far
 Because I put up an "I.V. Bottle" to administer gasoline to the coil of tubing on the exhaust pipe
cracked the needle valve open to the tune of 1 drip every 5 seconds, (barely dripping at all)
and started the motor with the start rope and quick start sprayed into the intake ball valve.
after some time I finally got the engine to start and I maintained its run by spraying quickstart into the intake for about 2 minutes.
By that time the heat on the exhaust pipe was starting to vaporize the gasoline in the coil and it was pushing out raw gasoline into the intake which started flooding the engine big time...
and although I got it running a few times there after I couldn't keep it going because everytime I cracked open the needle valve I got a big squirt of fuel that flooded the engine all over again
...so I never did get it to run on vapor using this method, my hands were too blistered after tugging on the pull rope for hours on end that I gave up ....FOR NOW....
...
however on my Ford pinto I tried a similar method after my glass jug broke..I coiled up copper tubing and placed it under the heat shield on top the exhaust manifold and controlled the gas to the coil through a needle valve.... I did get that to work but it wasn't really drivable because as I pressed on the accelerator I had to open the valve at the same time.... made for very interesting running down the road though when it was adjusted correctly it ran super smooth and purred like a kitten...(very un characteristic of the pinto!)... but again, having to adjust the gas valve while going down the road, at every hill, and every slow down, made it too hard to use so I took it all off and went back to the regular gas carburetor.
perhaps all I have to do to get this to work on the B&S 3.5hp engine is place the needle valve on the gas supply side of the coil... that would stop that sputtering and flooding problem...
....Hummmmm  gott'a try that!
...
Bob...

[Bob]

that reminds me , I did switch the needle valve to the beginning of the vaporizer coil on the pinto ages ago... that way when the fuel inters the coil and becomes vapor it immediately goes into the engine as vapor.   and the coil does not develop the OVER PRESSURE PROBLEM as I was getting in the B&S
so the answer is to put the needle valve on the side leading to the copper coils.... Not where I have it at the air valve.   so live and learn...again!
this also makes it easier to control when the coil finally gets HOT.... as everything from the needle valve is vaporized as soon as it inters the coil, so its easier to adjust.
...
 there is still a transition period however.... and once the coil becomes hot  it pushes out the un-vaporized gas and will flood the engine...
perhaps a smaller coil would limit this problem ?...less volume.
 I set this project aside some time ago till I could think of a solution to the problem.
as of this date I haven't came up with one except perhaps to run the engine till its warm on a secondary system, and then introduce the vapor.... I think this may well be the only way to get it to work on a small engine like this.
 there is also the issue of "cold intake air" but I think a shroud over the exhaust pipe feeding warmed air into the intake would take care of that problem....if it becomes a problem.

so if I can ever get back to the experiment with the B&S I'll make those changes and try again!
...
Bob....

[Jake]

Wow. Its been a while since I've been here! good to see yall are keepin at it. I think your on the right track with the idea of starting on a secondary system and then switching to vapor. kinda like the old diesels that you had to start on gas until they warmed up. lack of glow plugs? i dunno. anyway it worked for them so it should for you i would think

[Bob]

Thanks Jake !
 yah its been a while , welcome back
...
Bob...