Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by rookie »

1989TransAm wrote:While we are on the subject are there any reports as to horsepower gain using MS109?
Thats what DV and Terry used in the video in the first post of this thread.
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by David Redszus »

Oxygenated race gas like Renegade K-16 , will always make more power in a normally aspirated engine than non - oxygenated gasoline .
Sorry, that is not even close to being correct. There are several reasons.
The presence of oxygen (which has NO BTU value) must displace hydrocarbons (which do have BTU value), and so more fuel is needed just to get back to the same starting point.

If two fuels were identical in every respect except for oxygen content, some conclusions could be drawn with adequate testing and optimized tuning. But that is not the case. Oxygenated fuels are completely different in the composition, evaporation characteristics, BTU potential, ignitability, completeness of burn, etc, etc, etc.

The real trick to fuel evaluation (besides what the engine likes or does not like) is to know the distillation curve and the stoich value. Or a good fuel chemist. :D
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by dieselgeek »

David Redszus wrote:
Oxygenated race gas like Renegade K-16 , will always make more power in a normally aspirated engine than non - oxygenated gasoline .
Sorry, that is not even close to being correct. There are several reasons.
The presence of oxygen (which has NO BTU value) must displace hydrocarbons (which do have BTU value), and so more fuel is needed just to get back to the same starting point.

If two fuels were identical in every respect except for oxygen content, some conclusions could be drawn with adequate testing and optimized tuning. But that is not the case. Oxygenated fuels are completely different in the composition, evaporation characteristics, BTU potential, ignitability, completeness of burn, etc, etc, etc.

The real trick to fuel evaluation (besides what the engine likes or does not like) is to know the distillation curve and the stoich value. Or a good fuel chemist. :D
Whew thanks for that!

For a minute there I was a victim of the "our product works 100% of the time or you're just stupid" sales pitch. :?
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by rookie »

David Redszus wrote:
Oxygenated race gas like Renegade K-16 , will always make more power in a normally aspirated engine than non - oxygenated gasoline .
Sorry, that is not even close to being correct. There are several reasons.
The presence of oxygen (which has NO BTU value) must displace hydrocarbons (which do have BTU value), and so more fuel is needed just to get back to the same starting point.

If two fuels were identical in every respect except for oxygen content, some conclusions could be drawn with adequate testing and optimized tuning. But that is not the case. Oxygenated fuels are completely different in the composition, evaporation characteristics, BTU potential, ignitability, completeness of burn, etc, etc, etc.

The real trick to fuel evaluation (besides what the engine likes or does not like) is to know the distillation curve and the stoich value. Or a good fuel chemist. :D
David you have touched on something that needs to be addressed; why does oxygenated fuel require more jetting and why would it not always produce more power?
Could you expand on the results from your testing?

This is why VP and DV or trying to do a video about tuning and addressing oxygenated fuels. viewtopic.php?f=14&t=29322

From my experience over 20 years in the fuel business is most people don’t want to hear that they aren’t tuning properly or they have chosen the wrong fuel, they would rather blame the fuel manufacturer.

If people don't want to hear the truth then why should they spend their time and money to produce a video that most will not accept as legit?
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by dieselgeek »

rookie wrote:From my experience over 20 years in the fuel business is most people don’t want to hear that they aren’t tuning properly or they have chosen the wrong fuel, they would rather blame the fuel manufacturer.
i was tuning 8 cylinders individually, sweeping AFRs to find peak power at rpm increments along a WOT power pull. It's really simple and highly effective. If you believe that oxygenated fuel always provide a power increase with "tuning" I'm anxious to hear:

How do you tune?
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by rookie »

dieselgeek wrote:
rookie wrote:From my experience over 20 years in the fuel business is most people don’t want to hear that they aren’t tuning properly or they have chosen the wrong fuel, they would rather blame the fuel manufacturer.
i was tuning 8 cylinders individually, sweeping AFRs to find peak power at rpm increments along a WOT power pull. It's really simple and highly effective. If you believe that oxygenated fuel always provide a power increase with "tuning" I'm anxious to hear:

How do you tune?
If you think I have said oxygenated fuels always make more power you have not read my posts.
I personally don't run it as I have a specific application and many many many years of running a specific tune that has worked with out flaw, I do have some projects in the works that I will be trying oxygenated fuel on and I am very interested in what others have experienced.
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

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David Redszus wrote:Oxygenated fuels are completely different in the composition, evaporation characteristics, BTU potential, ignitability, completeness of burn, etc, etc, etc.
I think this is the key. All these things improve the engines ability to distribute fuel more equally to all the cylinders, and burn the fuel more completely. If the engine is efficient at distributing and burning the CORRECT fuel for that engine, it will see little if any gain from an oxygenated fuel. An engine that has poor fuel distribution or burn characteristics will improve the most. Seeing an engine run with O2 sensors in all cylinders can be eye opening, it showed me the importance of the burn capability of the engine and on a carbureted car the importance of how the intake distributes fuel through the RPM range Ever have a big cubic inch engine that didn't respond to a larger carb like you expected? WOT vacuum is lower, the fuel doesn't vaporize as early, and likely fuel distribution isn't as good. Fix the problem below the carb, you make more power. Or just bandaid it with a small carb and/or oxygenated fuel. I'll have O2 bungs in all 8 primary tubes before my SB2 goes on the dyno again...
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by David Redszus »

Let's say we were to take a single fuel component such as the commonly recognized "isooctane", (which is actually 2,2,4 TMP, since ISO merely refers to some chemical variant that has the same molecular weight but different molecular structure), and tune an engine to best power. That fuel would have a certain specific gravity, boiling point, heat of vaporization, heat of combustion, stoich value, vapor pressure, and viscosity.

It is those characteristics, cited above, that determine how the engine will burn the fuel.

Now let's add 25% of some oxygenate, (i.e, alcohol, ether, etc.). What will change?
Every single one of the above cited characteristics will change in some way. Some for the better, others for the worse.

In addition, since the 25% oxygenate may contain anywhere from 50% to 18% oxygen, we have reduced the BTU value of the fuel. If methanol is used (50% oxygen) a 25% mix would add 12.5% oxygen to the fuel, and remove or displace that volume of hydrocarbon fuel. Now it becomes necessary to increase the amount of fuel sent to the engine in order to obtain the very same heat production.

However, if the oygenate has a low boiling point and high heat of vaporization value, the fuel evaporation might cool the inlet charge thereby increasing air charge density. This would then also require fuel enrichment to compensate.
On the other hand, if the engine were running too rich, adding an oxygenate would serve to lean out the fuel mixture, which might improve performance. But not in all engines and all states of tune.

In addition to issues such as heat value, cooling value, vapor pressure, and boiling point, a change in fuel properties will probably require an adjustment in ignition timing. That might not simply be an across the board timing change, but might require a change in the shape of the ignition advance curve.

Now suppose we qualify on a hot afternoon but race in the feature at night. The change in ambient air temperature will require the fuel mass delivery to be modified.

It does not take a savvy engine tuner very long to figure out that a Lambda sensor would make a whole lot of sense to help tune to changing conditions. While an oxygen sensor may occasionally lie to us, it doesn't fib as much as does our asss sensor.

Oh, did we assume that the fuel will be the same from batch to batch?
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

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David Redszus wrote: Now let's add 25% of some oxygenate, (i.e, alcohol, ether, etc.). What will change?
Every single one of the above cited characteristics will change in some way. Some for the better, others for the worse.
Is this the same with MTBE?
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by 1989TransAm »

For those of us running EFI is there a ballpark figure of how much to enrich the WOT settings when using MS109? Say if you are at 13:1 A/F ratio for WOT throttle would you want to be at 12.8:1 when using MS109 or even richer? In the video with the carb it said to go up 5 jets sizes for instance.
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by Stan Weiss »

Can someone post a data sheet for MS 109 or tell me what the SG of MS109 is?

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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

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Stan Weiss wrote:Can someone post a data sheet for MS 109 or tell me what the SG of MS109 is?

Stan
http://www.vpracingfuels.com/ms-109-spec.html
http://www.vpracingfuels.com/vp-drag-racing.html

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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by Stan Weiss »

rookie wrote:
Stan Weiss wrote:Can someone post a data sheet for MS 109 or tell me what the SG of MS109 is?

Stan
http://www.vpracingfuels.com/ms-109-spec.html
http://www.vpracingfuels.com/vp-drag-racing.html

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Yes, Thanks.

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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by BrazilianZ28Camaro »

David Redszus wrote:Let's say we were to take a single fuel component such as the commonly recognized "isooctane", (which is actually 2,2,4 TMP, since ISO merely refers to some chemical variant that has the same molecular weight but different molecular structure), and tune an engine to best power. That fuel would have a certain specific gravity, boiling point, heat of vaporization, heat of combustion, stoich value, vapor pressure, and viscosity.

It is those characteristics, cited above, that determine how the engine will burn the fuel.

Now let's add 25% of some oxygenate, (i.e, alcohol, ether, etc.). What will change?
Every single one of the above cited characteristics will change in some way. Some for the better, others for the worse.

In addition, since the 25% oxygenate may contain anywhere from 50% to 18% oxygen, we have reduced the BTU value of the fuel. If methanol is used (50% oxygen) a 25% mix would add 12.5% oxygen to the fuel, and remove or displace that volume of hydrocarbon fuel. Now it becomes necessary to increase the amount of fuel sent to the engine in order to obtain the very same heat production.

However, if the oygenate has a low boiling point and high heat of vaporization value, the fuel evaporation might cool the inlet charge thereby increasing air charge density. This would then also require fuel enrichment to compensate.
On the other hand, if the engine were running too rich, adding an oxygenate would serve to lean out the fuel mixture, which might improve performance. But not in all engines and all states of tune.

In addition to issues such as heat value, cooling value, vapor pressure, and boiling point, a change in fuel properties will probably require an adjustment in ignition timing. That might not simply be an across the board timing change, but might require a change in the shape of the ignition advance curve.

Now suppose we qualify on a hot afternoon but race in the feature at night. The change in ambient air temperature will require the fuel mass delivery to be modified.

It does not take a savvy engine tuner very long to figure out that a Lambda sensor would make a whole lot of sense to help tune to changing conditions. While an oxygen sensor may occasionally lie to us, it doesn't fib as much as does our asss sensor.

Oh, did we assume that the fuel will be the same from batch to batch?
Silly wabbit.
David, I have a doubt about this kind of fuel blend.

Let's say we run a engine w/ 100% non oxigenated, no alcohol gasoline and the best power AFR is 13:1.

Now lets say I'm trying to go faster and add 50% of "dry" alcohol (wich would make best power at about 7:1 AFR)

Is correct to say that the new "required" AFR to the engine make best power will be the average of the AFRs from the above fuels? (13+7/2=10 AFR)

Seen to me that the gas in the mixture will burn rich and the alcohol in the mix will burn lean. If this is correct, there's no way the car will be faster. IMHO.
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Re: Oxygenated fuel 20+ Horse power?

Post by Stan Weiss »

BrazilianZ28Camaro wrote:
David, I have a doubt about this kind of fuel blend.

Let's say we run a engine w/ 100% non oxigenated, no alcohol gasoline and the best power AFR is 13:1.

Now lets say I'm trying to go faster and add 50% of "dry" alcohol (wich would make best power at about 7:1 AFR)

Is correct to say that the new "required" AFR to the engine make best power will be the average of the AFRs from the above fuels? (13+7/2=10 AFR)

Seen to me that the gas in the mixture will burn rich and the alcohol in the mix will burn lean. If this is correct, there's no way the car will be faster. IMHO.
Can you please explain this logic?

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