Sounds too good to be true. Another scam?
Turns Out Mixing Water And Diesel Fuel Is A Great Thing (msn.com)
It appears to be legit but a whole lot of wishful thinking seems to be involved.
Two little related words: Snow Diesel.
The correct place to meter water for diesel-engine water injection is “historically” NOT in the fuel. It’s where Snow does it, to help cool the intake charge below what the intercooler system does, or directly into the combustion chamber, if necessary via multiple or pilot injection, using a dedicated separate injector and pump system.
No weird proprietary colloidal suspension or micelles or whatever required. (I typed this before I actually researched what HDAS did!)
For those of you actually interested in how the trick works: this is promotional material from Trillion but seems to have reasonable discussion and some illustrations:
https://utt.edu.tt/uploads/3_Mr._Alex_Gomez_-_Trillion_LLC_-_HydroDiesel_.pdf
How does this affect the lubricity of the fuel?
What your basically doing is giving the diesel engine a big boost of flashing steam during the combustion stroke. Water and menthol injection have been used for decades on pulling diesel engines in tractor pulling series. For the short term it can almost double the power but if your bottom end of your engine or head gasket or head bolts or studs have a weakness in them it can become very expensive. Think of it as the diesel engine form of nitrous oxide injection.
I’d be skeptical of “get something for nothing”. However, some aircraft engines did use water injection in WW2 to increase power (and some even used a water-methanol mixture)
"In internal combustion engines, water injection, also known as anti-detonant injection (ADI), can spray water into the incoming air or fuel-
In looking through their presentation - they are primarly talking about the improvement of diesel used in ocean shipping (which is predominately ‘heavy’ bunker grade oil’ yet when the go into their detail description of their process they at making their presentation on engines that use the lighter diesel that is commonly used for OTR trucks and railroad locomotives.
The process has promise if it actually works as they say it does - I have my doubts.
One aspect of the presentation was that the steam explosions in the entrained water droplets did a very good job of atomizing the fuel before combustion. A perhaps naive thought is that the process prevents “charring” of the fuel and inhibits PM formation.
Another thought is that the presence of water increases the mass of gas in the cylinder and both cools the flame (lower NOx) while still maintaining the peak pressure.
I do think the claimed reductions in fuel use sound a wee bit too optimistic.
This is something that the railroads should investigate. According to one part of their presentation, Trillion has tested “successfully “ with small Diesel engines, a 6 liter International, a 4 liter Kubota, a 6 liter Izuzu, and a couple others not identified, for which they have test reports. But they didn’t make these reports available from their website, so we don’t know exactly what was tested. It looks like the railroads will have to test their larger Diesel engines, especially at max horsepower at train startup and uphill climbs.
Trillion and an independent lab in Louisiana tested for greenhouse gases CO2, NOx,SO2, and particulate matter, for which there are reports. They mention the 40% to 90% reduction, which is realily good for health and the planet, but still no links to the reports.
The independent lab also tested combustion temperatures, and detonation, for which there is a report, and it would appear that HydroDiesel will not melt the pistons, or burn the valves and rings, and possibly would not require increased radiator capacity. Still no links to the reports.
What Trillion doesn’t talk about is power increase in the engine. This would have an affect on the bearings, the oil pressure to them, the oil cooling, and the lubricating quality of the oil. Most Diesel engines are overbuilt and can take some power increases and some engines even have e-chips available to increase the power. The railroads would have to frequently test the oil for bearing particles. If excessive, then the railroads can look into testing with synthetic oils or blends there of. As an aside, my nephew has put 700,000 miles on a Chrysler minivan running full synthetic with no engine tear down. The automatic transmission with standard transmission fluid had to be rebuilt twice. Another possibility would be for the railroads to blend a less powerful HydroDiesel, but this would negate some of the benefits.
The big payoff for the railroads is a possible 20% reduction in
Hey - you’re cutting into my dividend, there…
Testing and PSR are not compatible strategies to maximize shareholder value.