Just wondering if anyone has tried (methyl benzene aka toulene) or (dimethyl benzene aka xylene) injection? Since these 2 hydrocarbons have octane number higher than alcohols and heat of combustion similar to gasoline.

 

I use to buy these 2 items in order to boost octane, by the gallon and 5 gal. barrell. I will say that the fumes are really caustic and not something i would reccomend.

 

i used to use xylene as a octane booster too. It works well, but gets kinda pricey.

 

i used to use toluene to dissolve fullerenes(bucky *****). It destroys nitrile gloves and its also an excellent degreaser/dewaxer

 

I am thinking it should work well when injected instead of having to add it in the fuel tank and burning it full time.
I am also not interested in the cooling of the intake charge since i am only interested in what happens in the combustion chamber.

 

The problem with toluene is that it really eats things up. It'd need special injectors and lines to work. A system easier to build, but more expensive and complex to control would be to have 4 seconday injectors running off their own tank of real high octane race gas - programmed only to come on at high load.
Does anyone have sources for parts that will hold up to toluene, or know someone that has successfully run such a system long term? A friend of mine had this very same toluene injection idea about 10 months ago.

 

FYI, here are the RON, MON, Boiling Point, and Flash point for the various forms of Xylene and Toluene:

toluene: 124 : 112 : 111*C : 480*C

meta-xylene: 162 : 124 : 138*C : 463*C

para-xylene: 155 : 126 : 138*C : 530*C

ortho-xylene: 126 : 102 : 144*C : 530*C

And, for fun, the same for Ethanol and Methanol:

ethanol: 129 : 102 : 78*C : 365*C

methanol: 133 : 105 : 65*C : 385*C

-Adrian

 

Parts should similar to methanol: lines can be made of PTFE, PFA, FEP.....fittings of brass, 316SS and a fuel pump like the older buschur/smc injection system.

 

uhm... you wouldn't wanna inject it... cuz it would not make any improvement over running it in the fuel tank... the reason why alcohol is injected is because you'd have to seriously retune yer car to run it straight right? and the fact that running it straight would give you less hp without such a drastic retune (it has a lower yield). and when injected it gives you a cooler cylinder... same with methane or propane yeah?

 

Sure it would have a use. Then you could run "cheap" low octane gas when you're cruising. When you get on the throttle, you change it so that it's half Toluene/Xylene, then you have race fuel.

It's just very expensive to impliment.

 

I thought that above 30% toluene content, it starts to have detrimental effects at higher rpms because toluene burns slower...

l8r)

 

Exposure to Xylene and Toluene cause Leukemia. Not something I would want to continually mess with

 

used tolulene for over a year in a 2.7t audi... no problems and the car ran harder than ever.

 

You might already mess with that stuff every day; it's in gasoline, solvents, fingernail polish, etc.

The thing to remember is the dose makes the poison. Don't go swimming in the stuff.

 

Yes that is what I've read as well. Also how the base fuel was created. The problem is different aromatics do different things that we might not already know about. Which is why when someone says an engine is built or tuned for race gas, they want you to run race gas and not mix up your own stuff.

In small ratios all these little things work but I would be very hesistant to run larger ratios and longer term - without going into really detailed study.