Goodman water injection system.

[mpgnut]

Does anybody have a Goodman Water Injection system, or at least familiar with it? There was an article in Mother Earth News years ago. As I recall he was getting up to 50% increases with this system.

[s_buffalo]

You can read the EPA report on it at
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/devices/511804.pdf

It includes a description, installation instructions and test results, but no diagrams.

Cheers,
Stinky

[iburnh2o]

patent here

[smitty]

I have the injector and some instructions, somewhere in a box. I got it shortly after the Popular Science article, about 1979, maybe. A friend bought the Datsun 510 wagon I was going to put it on, and I haven't yet built an engine to use it.

The idea is very good, very simple. Goodman, who has aviation interests, found this nozzle as a component of some jet engine. The nozzle has one inlet nipple for the ADI fluid (water, water/alcohol) AND a second nipple to admit compressed air. The point of the air is to be able to get fine atomization of the ADI fluid at a very low flow rate. This allows you to have full-time water-injection instead of turning it on and off, yet not empty your ADI tank in a hurry. An additional benefit of full-time water is that it is serves the same function as the EGR system, suppressing NOx formation, allowing you to disable the EGR.

Goodman supplied compressed air at 4psi to the nozzle by tapping the "smog pump" that supplied air to the exhaust manifold in his '78 Ford Fiesta. But he used a windshield washer pump for the ADI fluid, a lousy idea in my view, seeing that those pumps are designed for 3-second bursts, not continuous operation.

Years ago, I read a CARB evaluation of various aftermarket systems including Goodman's, and they all were dismissed as having little value. This is true as far as it goes; water injection is of little or no value in and engine that runs well without it. But the whole point of water injection, as asserted by Sir Harry Ricardo in the 1920's, is that it allows you to build an engine with a lot more compression, which translates to more power and fuel efficiency. I forget what the compression ratio was on Goodman's rebuilt Fiesta engine, but he was getting 50mpg, highway.

[smitty]

Yes, old men tend to repeat themselves.

[ssheen]

Yes, old men tend to repeat themselves.

All cleaned up.

[whitevette]

Yes, old men tend to repeat themselves.

Ah! Let this "old man" repeat himself...
As long as liquid water (in atomized / sprayed form) is forced upon the gasoline engine, there are gonna be problems. Like no benefit...like Sir Harry R. found out. Not until he vaporized the liquid did he see positive results. Vaporizing this much liquid water is quite a task...& don't even think of steam. It takes an enormous amout of heat (from where are you gonna get this?) to make lots of steam.
This was eons ago. How far we have not come! I wonder why....
There is a "missing link" afoot, here. Ask yourself "What if...?" two different technologies might be combined to up the outputs of the tired , old IC process?
I'm playing around with this aspect. Stay tuned.... -whitevette

[maxc]

[quote="whitevette"][As long as liquid water (in atomized / sprayed form) is forced upon the gasoline engine, there are gonna be problems. Like no benefit...

So why do the HC level's drop 30% on my 4 gas analyzer when I turn my WI system on?

regards

Mark

[smitty]

Yeah, I don't know what he's talking about. We're suppressing detonation in high compression gas engines, not turning them into steam engines. But maybe that's what he's working on. The Army tested various ratios of water flow to fuel flow for their ADI systems in the later P-51s and other fighters, and settled on 40% water to fuel. They wouldn't have used water at that rate if they didn't think it was pretty important, given all the added weight. Now those of us with naturally-aspirated engines aren't injecting water into that kind of highly-compressed and very hot intake charge, but then we aren't talking about anything like 40% water. The injector Pat Goodman came up with will atomize a very small water flowrate, as I said.

[vapper]

patent here

http://www.google.com/patents
Type in 4401059 to view Goodman's patent on his water injection system.