I have been fed up the last six months on the issues of meth injection. in point being there is not a pump on the market that can be called reliable for 100% use of meth. So I will be trying the switch to injecting ethanol instead of methanol. this requires a complete new system design. The beauty of injecting ethanol is it is not as corrosive as as methanol so regular fuel pumps can be used. normal fuel injectors can be used as well. Ideally a secondary injection system should be as reliable as your primary fuel system. This would eliminate any need for a failsafe. The more simple the system is the more reliable it will be.

My plan is to build a small stainless tank that uses the factory fuel pump. Used factory pumps are everywhere so They are cheap. E85 doesnt seem to affect them so I dont see why they wouldn't handle e99 which is what I plan to use. I was also thinking of not even using a regulator. I dont think it will be needed. The pump will turn on at 2psi and the injection will start at 5psi. There should be no problem with the pump since it is only running during boost. My question is will the injectors open and close fine with the added fuel pressure? Does anyone know if fuel injectors have a lock up point? does anyone know how much fuel pressure the factory pump makes run wide open with no return line? The fuel injectors will be controlled by a separate map based additional injector map. So the need to add fuel pressure as boost rises will not be necessary in that sense.

It will be easy to test what the fuel pressure is once I get this tank built. I was just wondering If anyone sees potential problems of setting this up before I run into them myself?

 

wouldn't it be easier to buy a meth/water kit and just fill it with ethanol?

methanol and ethanol exhibit many of the same qualities, so it does not require a completely different system to run it as a 5th injector. if you have a meth injection kit, it will work with ethanol no problem. also, ethanol is corrosive just like methanol. also, because you are using the system to boost your car higher, you will still want the failsafe, because if for some reason the injector turns off, you'll have high boost and no extra fuel. it is going to have the same problems as a regular meth kit.

as for fuel injectors, you can run not enough pressure with them, and you can run to much pressure with them. to much opens the valve and fuel leaks out, and not enough doesn't let the fuel mist when it leaves the nozzle. all of these parameters will be listed with the injector though, they will have a spec sheet with operating range for pressures. you can also overheat injectors, which is why it is strong recommended to not use an injector as on/off switch. you need to pulse it

 

I think to the fuel injectors it would be like adding a rising rate fuel pressure regulator. Like Im sure you already know many people do this successfully but the problem is there is much more stress on the injector when it is constantly opening and closing at 150psi instead of 50psi. The extra stress turns into extra heat which can make them fail and seize up.

Hope I helped cuz you've helped me in the past.

GL

 

Actually you cant use ethanol with an Aquamist pump or a surflow pump setup for methanol. The seals wont last. I have made an injection rail and will be converting a car soon.

 

Whats the base psi on that FPR?

 

the wetted parts within the aquamist/shurflo pumps - santoprene, epdm and nylon, both are 100% compatible with pure ethanol

the wetted parts in the High Speed Valve - EDPM and stainless steel too are 100% compatible.

the oring seals in the fittings, NBR/buna/nitrile too will work great with ethanol under static conditions.

Now...denatured alcohol (ethanol + several % of denaturing agents to make it non-drinkable) is different - it has denaturing agents (acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, dichloromethane.....depends on the formulation of the DA maker), all are destructive to polymeric seals.

 

Wait a minute... pure ethanol ie 200 proof is corrosive to the plastic parts? I use it straight up and at different concentrations at work and have never had gaskets fail, nor metal pieces corrode? Methanol I don't use as much since it isn't as volatile, ie doesn't evaporate as fast. I would think that ethanol would just be that much better than methanol? Although I've read that perhaps this property is why ethanol is worse than ethanol.... which is why they use methanol in race engines versus ethanol.

 

vapor pressure of methanol = 128Torr@20C
vapor pressure of EtOH/DA = ~40Torr@20C

Methanol will evaporate faster

it is easier to obtain purer methanol than ethanol (over 96% is hard to obtain w/o creative chemistry or molecular sieves) - everclear is 96% + ~4% water

 

Richard stated his parts were not compatible with gasoline. Maybe he can chime in here. But regaurdless of that answer the sureflow pumps are not reliable on meth, changing to ethanol isn't going to change the reliability level.

My point to this is all alky kits on the market need a failsafe because they are no where near as reliable as your factory fuel system. You cant build second factory like system and inject meth. But you can inject ethanol this way.

Since no one I know has tried this I am going to give it a shot. The question I want answered that no one seems to be able to answer is if you inject ethanol at same quantities as meth (20% of total fuel) will it perform as well as methanol?

 

I going to use the factory evo8 FPR.

 

oh...you are injecting E85! then a regular fuel injector/pump is the way to go.

from factory, shurflo pump 150spig max. when a company alters a pump to to push 250psig ~1.6X what it is designed for -more heat, more stress on seals/parts is generated, they will fail much sooner.......things work best unstressed

specific heats of the 2:
Ethanol 2.43 kJ/( kg * deg K)
Methanol 2.51 kJ/( kg * deg K)

latent heat of the 2:
Ethanol 904 kJ/kg
Methanol 1109 kJ/kg

specific gravity of the 2:
EtOH 0.789
MeOH 0.791

methanol have a slight edge over ethanol...... but there are other factors like atomization and distribution of injectant so that each runner gets the same amount of

GL on your experimentation Keep us posted

 

just reread your #1 post...e99

is the 1% gas in there a "denaturing agent"?

 

In a word, "no".

The optimum power ratio (not stoich mind you) of air to fuel for ethanol (pure, not e85) is 6.5:1, for methanol it is 4.5:1. This shows us that you would need much more volume of methanol than ethanol to achieve the same lambda (about 44% more). At the same time, methanol has a greater latent heat of evaporation on a per pound basis (472 btu/lb for meth vs. 410 btu/lb for eth). So when you put the two together, meth has a 66% greater cooling capacity (more cooling per unit, and more units). Also, per pound, meth has 9800 btu's of heat energy compared to eth's 12500. But when you factor in the ratio that you will be using meth, you end up with an advantage for meth again: 9800 * (6.5/4.5) = 14155 btus vs. 12500 btus == 13% more heat energy for meth.

So based on all of that, meth cools better and has the potential to produce more power (heat energy) than ethanol. But both are superior to petrol in either regard. For reference, unleaded pump gas would have an ideal power air to fuel ratio of around 12.0:1 and it contains 19000 btu's per pound and has a latent heat of evap of only 135 btu/lb. So even ethanol has 5.6 times the cooling capacity and 21% more heat energy when compared to gas. Meth is better yet, but as you can see even ethanol is a big jump up from gas...

 

sense i have first hand experience using a 5th injector injecting E-85, yes i know it works. it will also work with meth if your lines are alcohol compatable. although it sounds like fun, i think you are just reinventing the wheel. no system is going to be as reliable as the stock system. even if you use all OEM parts, your wiring may not be to par, the mount of the injector might fail... etc etc. point is, if you are planning on running a second fueling system to run higher boost, you are going to want some kind of fail safe.


the 5th injector we used on our race car took its fuel from the fuel rail so it used the same pump the primary injectors used. it even used the same fuel (it was a turbo E85 car with 5 injectors). the 5th injector was a staged injector but it was pulsed. its pulsewidth was incremental with the boost pressure and triggered with the crank position. all of this was done in the ECU for the car. your setup is going to be similiar, instead of running off the rail your getting a second pump, and a second gas tank and running a second fuel. all of which adds to the complexity, and thus reduces the reliability. i would highly recommend a failsafe even for the system your developping.

good luck though, and let us know how it works.

 

I am aware of all the calculations. But they dont mean much to me. Practical on car experience is what I am after. The cooling abilities is only a small part of the equation. It may only take injecting an additional 100cc of ethanol to equal the cooling properties of methanol. Then there is more heat energy per unit for a given amount of ethanol. Then there is detonation resistance. Who fares better there? F1 converted from meth to eth with no reported power losses. Top tuners in the drag scene say eth and meth are very near the same potential with meth getting the win by a few percent not 13%. Then there is the article of the high altitude planes that ran well on eth and meth but not isopropl. Again no real reports of ethanol injection the way I plan to try it. If you know someone who has done it this way please post a link.

My bet is the accuracy of injecting with injectors and the reliability will lead to far more potential then that of meth setups.