i recently read an article about this product i wanna know if anyone is running it on a turbo or supercharger application, seems like it would be a good idea esp. for those guys who keep detonating.

 

Yes, Kev, Jane(was), Mardi, and a few others I forget.

If you're boosted, GET IT!

 

im planning on running the system this summer, I had it on my gsx,highly recommed for use in summer heat

 

that is what im saying it makes sense, i also read that u can add race gas to the water mixture to add alittle more protection with the aquamist, ...what is the cost on this product?

 

I've been thinking about the Aquamist system and I have one concern. Our engines use dry intake manifolds designed for air flow only, so they have pretty severe 90 degree turns from the plenum to the intake runners. I'm concerned that unless the water is atomized to an extremely small droplet size, most of the water vapor is going to travel down to the cylinder 1 and 2 intake runners and bypass the others. Maybe I'm overly concerned and it's not that bad a situation.

Anybody have any thoughts or information on that regard?

 

I've never heard of adding race gas, but maybe.

People mix in denatured alcohol for a considerable bump in octane.

 

Not a concern...trust me. Many many dry intake manifold cars are running this setup including Mardi, Jane, and Kev. I think the 5th gen manifold is even worse as far as 90-degree turns goes.

Plus, what about Jime and others who are running wet nitrous? Wouldn't that be the same issue?

I'll see if I can dig up any technical information on Aqumist use with dry type intake manifolds.

 

Haven't found anything yet, but here's some good info:
http://waterinjection.info/documents...rinjection.htm

 

wouldnt a good alternative be the toleune?

 

i first read about aquamist in a magazine...HCI i think it was.. i gotta find the magazine, they showed installation and gave a brief description on the product, they installed it on the new EVO, i remember them saying they mixed race fuel and water in the resivour.

<clueless here> question would it be better to run the aquamist or small n2o system before or after the intercooler? or could u run a Ntercooler(nx system) then run a aquamist to be very safe.

 

the aquamist would prevent detonation, but the n20 shot would increase detonation while increasing power. i don't beleive the aquamist provides any power , if not it it may rob some power

 

some people use the n20 to cool the system... not big shots, smallest possible not 100% sure on this but i remember reading it somewhere

 

thats really hard to beleive, the only way i could see htat a small shot prevented detonation would be by running a wet shot and using a unporportionally rich n20/fuel mixture

personnally I would just use the toluene, its a faq in the boosted forum

 

I believe it has added power to a member's car - but I forget just who it was and I don't recall actually seeing a Dyno.

I would certainly like to know if it at all adds power due to a cooler charge.
Either way, it's something I'll be purchasing soon.

IanS

 

Water injection will have a very minimal effect on charge air cooling. The amount of water injected is just too little. What it does have a large effect on is the combustion chamber temperature after ignition. At that time the water changes to steam. Even though the amount of water is small, the latent heat of vaporisation of water is very large, so the process of converting the liquid water to steam uses up a significant amount of heat energy in the combustion chamber, resulting in much lower combustion chamber temps. The lower combustion temperature is what allows you to run more boost without the risk of detonation.

So, for water injection to be effective, you have to be running enough boost so that you are getting detonation without it. This seems fairly obvious, but I have read in other forums where this point seems to be lost on people. I think the reason is that they think water injection works like an intercooler, when it doesn't.

By itself, adding water injection to a good running engine that is making power without detonation does not add power. Actually, it can lower power since you are taking up space in the fuel/air charge with a noncombustible fluid (running a water/methanol mix helps in that regard). WI adds power indirectly because it allows you to increase boost without detonation. Adding WI to a detonating engine can result in increased power because detonation itself robs power.

 

I agree MOSTLY Stephen, however water injection DOES decrease intake charge temps considerably, 20-30 degrees or more even. It has an efficiency far superior to an IC.

An example is that Kev AND Jane both lost ~2psi with Aquamist and their SCs, which is explained by the old chem equation PV=nRT, ie if the T goes down, P must too holding V constant. Kev/Jane may have lost some power initially, but Kev gained once AFR was tuned to accomodate.

Another example to consider is why SAE correction compensates for humidity.

Please READ this article:
http://waterinjection.info/documents...rinjection.htm

 

If Kev lost 2 psi out of, say, 12 psi, and using an intake air temperature that I have measured at 12 psi (175F), then converting to absolute temperature and pressures gives: T2 = 635 X 24.7 / 26.7 = 587, which converts to 127 F, or a 48 F temperature drop. That is significant. If the pressure drop was only 1.5 psi the result is a 35 F temperature drop. Still pretty significant.

I humbly retract my earlier statement about the charge air cooling being very minimal. (Nevertheless, the biggest cause of detonation prevention is the reduction of combustion chamber temps due to water vaporization in the combustion chamber.)

 

Both were at ~11psi withOUT WI, but dropped to 9psi with, however the amount of cooling/drop can be dependent on ambient conditions.

Also, you can drop the intake temp even further by adding ice-water or keeping the coolant reservior out of the engine bay heat.

Last, this was PURE water. Running alcohol mix can be a tradeoff cooling wise, however it can DRAMATICALLY increase/mimick higher octane fuel for further detonation prevention. However, adding alcohol can be no benefit and you'd be better off running 100% water for more cooling effect.

 

It also is supposed to really clean up the carbon deposits in the intake/combustion chambers.

 

True...my mechanic told me in the "old" days, they used to hold the throttle at WOT and slowly dump a Big Gulp size cup of water into the intake and watch carbon chunks shoot out the exhaust.

He wasn't recommending this for my detonation issue on my Sentra unless I pulled the cat though.

 

Damn, that's not safe at all! The water would have to be atmoized in order to prevent hyrolock (or worse...water does not compress beyond a certain point, and the piston WILL give way in that instance). Just pouring water down the intake would be scary!

 

this is interesting, i would like to find a way to effectivly clean the combustion chamber and carbon deposits out. any way for us to do that?

INTERESTING READ
"Water injection is not a new idea, being first used in the 1930s, yet the principles remain the same today and are popular with the rallying fraternity, and it is now common knowledge that in the recent past, the factory rally teams of Peugeot and Renault, as well as the Volvo Touring Car teams have used water injection and you'll also find them fitted to the first Escort Cosworths and even the latest turbo'd Saab road cars are fitted with water injection as standard.

It is a well known fact that water does not burn but it is an efficient coolant (why else would most engines be water rather than air cooled), so it makes good sense to use it to reduce peak combustion and inlet air temperatures. This is achieved due to water having a high specific heat capacity and latent heat of evaporation, or in English, it's excellent at absorbing heat. It can therefore be used to control induction temperatures on high performance normally aspirated and turbo'd engines. Also water injection can be used to reduce high air temperatures making the air denser. If you get more air into the engine you can add more fuel and gain power.

The combustion process mixes air and fuel which is burnt to create energy, once you have an efficient fuel metering system the power output is governed by the amount of air that the engine can draw into its cylinders. With intake restriction removed, a normally aspirated engine is limited by atmospheric pressure, unless you add a turbo or supercharger. These devices compress the air as they force it into the engine at a greater pressure, known as boost pressure. Water injection is just another device for increasing the amount of air drawn into the engine as cooling the air makes it denser so there's more to mix with fuel.

You should notice that your car performs better in cool, damp weather conditions and this is because the air is denser which means more fuel will be burnt with the extra air and the resulting air/fuel ratio will be neater to optimum(assuming the engine is jetted correctly normally in cold conditions). By adding a water injection system to your vehicle it is possible to artificially simulating these conditions and adjusting the turbo boost level or advancing the timing it is possible to achieve an increased power and fuel economy, whilst suppressing detonation and producing less harmful emissions, cleaner pistons, valves and plugs.

A simple way of testing this theory is to measure acceleration on two days with opposite weather conditions.
First try it on a hot, dry day when the air is warm and thin, then compare it with a cold wet winter's day and you will see that the car will be faster on the cold wet day, because the cold, wet air is denser (more of it) than the warm air and as most simple fuel metering devices can detect dense air the fuel is increased to match. Another application for water injection is to reduce or prevent detonation by reducing the combustion temperature. If an engine starts to detonate, injecting water into the inlet tract will stop it occurring. With this in mind it is possible to advance your engines ignition timing to achieve more power (which would normally put the engine at risk of detonation), and to prevent engine failure by injecting water. A test was carried out on a normally aspirated engine, which proved the ignition timing could be advanced by 6 degrees more than normal and low octane unleaded fuel used instead of four star when a water injection system was fitted. This worked out to produce a saving of 20% on fuel costs.

With turbo charged cars, there is an uncontrollable temptation by the vehicle owners to keep winding up the boost a little more, or add a turbo upgrade, both of which pressurise and heat the gases even more than the increased levels that the initial turbo set up achieves. Adding an up rated inter cooler in an attempt to combat the temperatures will certainly help, but temperatures are still bound to rise uncontrollably above acceptable levels. lf the temperatures and pressures rise too high, detonation occurs, with the fuel auto igniting before the spark plug should be doing its job. It's the same as running massive amounts of ignition advance, and ends the same by melting piston crowns. The aim of water injection is to get the inlet temperature down to the optimum temperature of, as above this temperature the risk of detonation increases. Intake air at a turbo outlet is capable of reaching 120C at a boost of I bar and as high as 165C at 1.5 bar, so you can see why there is a problem. A standard inter cooler will normally fail to cool effectively, and a 50% increase in inter cooler size will only reduce temperatures by 60 - 75C, depending on boost pressure and vehicle specification. Water can prevent these temperature rises when injected into the air intake stream by reducing the inlet charge temperature, giving rise to improved volumetric efficiency of the engine. Additionally the evaporating water reduces the charge temperature prior to ignition, reducing the possibility of pre-ignition due to hot spots in the cylinder head. Water is the best choice for intake charge cooling because it's readily available, cheap and can be stored under the bonnet in a suitable reservoir, plus it absorbs heat better than most other liquids.

Lets see how good water is as a coolant, by passing air at 120C through a tube at a rate of 5kg per minute. At the center of that tube, we sprayed 50gms per minute of water at 25C. and found the final air temperature was 95C. a large reduction. For l00g of water per minute, the final air temperature was 70C, a reduction of 43% in temperature, while 200g reduced air temperature to 25C an 80% reduction. In other words, a flow of 200g of water per minute injected into the air stream, totally absorbed all of the heat in the air. Obviously modified engines will benefit most due to their higher pre-combustion pressures and temperatures (usually caused by higher compression ratios)

On a test car which had an induction air temperature at the butterfly of 70C at full boost a 43% reduction was needed to reach the optimum of 40C. The equations indicated 100g/min of water would be required to achieve the desired temperature drop. Several tests at different induction temperature levels were carried out to see if per*formance was affected. The tests started with 100 to 150g per minute and revealed that slightly more cooling was needed, the jet was changed accord*ingly and brought the charge temperature at the butterfly from 70C right down to 43C. Another series of tests were carried out, when the ignition was advanced and boost increased progressively to show the benefits of water injection. With the timing at 15 degrees and 12psi boost there was no difference in power with the water injection operated. As the boost was increased however, some big power gains were achieved. An average RS Turbo engine with standard compression would normally run about 11 degrees advance and detonation would occur at about 14 psi of boost. With an unusually advanced 15degrees of timing it would knock above 13 psi, but the tests showed it was possible to ignore timing and boost limitations and find 210 bhp and 233 lb-ft without any sign of detonation. An added bonus was driving the car on the road, the improved smoothness of the engine at high revs was very noticeable. The potential of water injection for anyone wanting to run high boost safely is obvious and it's also applicable to engines that run lots of advance and suffer detonation. With water injection you get peace of mind even if you don't go for more power.

Whilst the results of these tests are good it is possible to make the induction air temperature too cold and it is vitally important to inject the correct amount of water as at some point the volume of water needed to correct the temperature can be too much for correct combustion and power is lost. If the temperature drops below 40C, "fuel dropout" can occur, a phenomena where fuel vapours turn into droplets which won't burn as efficiently and can cause a weak mixture which can ultimately have the same catastrophic consequences as high inlet temperatures"

 

"Old" engines could have very low CR, low HP/cc, and tolerances compared to modern day cars, so that's probably why it worked. Then again, he may have been pulling my leg...not sure.

I did debate getting one of those hand pump pressurized "personal mister" thingys and rigging it up to the intake or putting a standard mister nipple/spray nozzle on the end of my windshield washer hose and dropping it in the intake box. Then hit WOT and pull the windshield washer lever.

 

Check the DIY Race Fuel sticky at the top of this very forum