I agree, and one place to start is on the whole reciprocating design. Converting linear motion to circular motion is not very efficient. A workable rotary engine would waste much less energy.
And I've often wondered about injecting gasoline VAPOR into the combustion chamber instead of particulate (atomized) gasoline. Liquid gasoline doesn't burn; it only ignites at the liquid-gas boundary of the atomized droplets. Wouldn't a proper air/gas mixture of vapor be much more explosive and avoid the loss of energy required for the state change from liquid to gas?
Superchargers tend to do that.
I don’t know how they would get vapor into the cylinders. Seems like it would be compressible and hard to ‘pump’ into the fuel rail.
Maybe somebody could invent a device that would mix the gasoline with air before it reached the cylinder.
I’m unsure what you mean by “a workable rotary engine”. My RX-7 in the 80’s had a working rotary engine that was very nice to me ;)
Rotary engine’s biggest problem has always been reliability. That’s just an engineering problem at this point since we know the concept is sound.
Regarding using petrol vapor instead of atomized injected fuel it’s very true that combustion would be much more efficient- due to higher compression and less waste of fuel. However, I think the reason this hasn’t been done in a realistic production engine is that gasoline doubles as a cooling agent for the combustion chamber which helps control ignition timing and prevents the cylinder head from melting which could happen otherwise.
I do not think so. The power of the internal combustion engine lies in the expansion inside the chamber. Injecting in the liquid phase adds to the expansion in the ignition. Inside the combustion chamber there is not a problem of too little heat for expansion; heat removal is part of the limits of efficiency.
You mean like using propane as fuel for IC engines?
“be much more explosive”
An exploding mixture in the combustion chamber is what causes engine-harming ping. The mixture in normal operation burns over a small amount of time. There’s a flame front that sweeps across the combustion chamber.
Higher octane gasoline prevents detonation (pinging) at higher compression ratios. Higher compression ratios make engines more efficient which also means more horsepower per engine size.
A higher octane fuel contans no more energy than regular fuel.
The major limit to the efficiency of fuel-burning engines is the limted attainable compression ratio. It’s about thermodynamics. Diesels are more efficient than spark-ignited engines because of their higher compression ratio.
My cousin demonstrated to me 40 years ago a vapor system. He had a lawn tractor with a non functioning carburetor. He essentially changed the main jet, I think he put in a bigger one, and ran the gas line to the top of a gallon gas can in which he put, of course, gasoline. The rig worked well and cut his very large yard on about half the gas he had normally used. It was strictly single speed and I guess he got the ratios right for that speed. Tom hooked up the throttle but couldn’t get it to run right at all using the throttle so he removed it and just ran single speed. I can’t get terribly technical about all this because I don’t know much about it, just what I saw him do. I rode it around once.
<><><><><> And I’ve often wondered about injecting gasoline VAPOR into the combustion chamber instead of particulate (atomized) gasoline. <><><><><>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58IkmPK6ikc
And I’ve often wondered about injecting gasoline VAPOR into the combustion chamber instead of particulate (atomized) gasoline. Liquid gasoline doesn’t burn; it only ignites at the liquid-gas boundary of the atomized droplets. Wouldn’t a proper air/gas mixture of vapor be much more explosive and avoid the loss of energy required for the state change from liquid to gas?
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Smokey Yunick had a test car running back in the late 1970’s or early 80’s , a fox chassis Mustang or Capri with an industrial diesel engine converted to run at (this is from memory) 500-700f and injesting vaporized fuel/air mix. I think this diesel was running on a high cetane fuel... If I remember right he was getting between 60 and 70mpg from a car that would normally get low 20’s in normal driving with acceptable performance and drivability.