E85 7th injector? Has anybody seen e 85 injected pre turbo?

[YEEE85]

I am converting to E85 soon and I was kicking around the idea of running E85 through a 7th injector pre turbo instead of methanol with the alky control kit (which I already have) as a solenoid trigger using rail pressure. As I understand, ethanol is much less corrosive and also good at cooling- not as good as methanol but still pretty good- I am decent with electronics and it seems like a relatively simple concept to use the alky control controller to trigger a solenoid under boost and run e 85 straight from the fuel tank using system pressure. It would take some tinkering but I feel like it would be a simpler thing to run- no worries about running out of alky in the tank, easier on the turbo and one less point of failure (alky pump) etc
I'm running a 1985 non intercooled set up and it needs all the help it can get ( I probably will build -or have built-a bad ass pissed off IC engine someday.....some day..)
My main question is whether I would see a comparable cooling affect with E85 vs meth? Am I correct in thinking that it would be easier on the compressor than pre turbo meth? Also wondering if the alky control kit ramps up progressively or is the pump simply on/off?

 

[YEEE85]

Would this be a safe thing to attempt and would I likely see any real world benefit?
There just my be a very good reason I haven't heard of this so if I'm going to blow myself up please warn me now. I am a diesel Tech not a chemist.

 

[Chuck Leeper]

Some reading material...

Pre turbo/SC water injection. - LS1TECH - Camaro and Firebird Forum Discussion

Forced Induction - Pre turbo/SC water injection. - has anyone tried this pre turbo water injection idea? got any logs or data from it? i have heard some VERY intresting things about it. sounds like you have to make sure you run LOTS of presure and spray as fine as you can. Anyone got any...

ls1tech.com

 

[YEEE85]

Some reading material...

Pre turbo/SC water injection. - LS1TECH - Camaro and Firebird Forum Discussion

Forced Induction - Pre turbo/SC water injection. - has anyone tried this pre turbo water injection idea? got any logs or data from it? i have heard some VERY intresting things about it. sounds like you have to make sure you run LOTS of presure and spray as fine as you can. Anyone got any...

ls1tech.com

Thanks Chuck. This will work great on my stock apearing LS

 

[YEEE85]

Some reading material...

Pre turbo/SC water injection. - LS1TECH - Camaro and Firebird Forum Discussion

Forced Induction - Pre turbo/SC water injection. - has anyone tried this pre turbo water injection idea? got any logs or data from it? i have heard some VERY intresting things about it. sounds like you have to make sure you run LOTS of presure and spray as fine as you can. Anyone got any...

ls1tech.com

what Im not understanding is how the tuning works with atomized fuel in the manifold that cant be metered through the injectors- from what I found on energy density and heat capacity you'd be super rich before you had enough volume to do a lot of cooling and then would the extra charge disperse correctly. Not as simple as it seemed at first. Late night reading binge and now I'm down the rabbit hole. Interesting.

 

[Chuck Leeper]

what Im not understanding is how the tuning works with atomized fuel in the manifold that cant be metered through the injectors-

Same way you would tune for alky injected in the up pipe.

 

[MikeS]

Probably easier to just buy 6 injectors sized for your goal with e85.

 

[YEEE85]

I like to dream shit up is all-my goal is to haul ass in a reliable car-that and pull squids in loud mustangs.

 

[Nigel]

What you want to look at is the latent heat of vaporization. Specific heat or heat capacity of the liquid plays a negligible part. The latent heat of vaporization for Meth and E85 is close, so you will get a similar benefit for cooling. Meth can run way richer though than E85, so you will get more cooling on the compression stroke which can suppress detonation better. With water, the latent heat of vaporization is about 2x.

You also have to look at the saturation temperature (boiling point) at the manifold pressure you are targeting. This temperature rises as pressure rises. Water has a much higher saturation temperature than Meth or E85, so ultimately you can cool more with the E85, but it takes twice as much to get there.

The benefit to pre turbo would be if you have your turbo absolutely maxed out and you do not want to put a bigger turbo on (bigger turbo is better). Since the entire engine system is ultimately limited by volume flow, increasing density in the scroll, which a pre-turbo setup would do, can allow a little more mass flow from the turbo itself. Mass flow is what make power.

Once you spray down to the saturation temperature, spraying more will not cool the charge anymore. At 20 psig, that is going to be around 200 degrees F. A good intercooler is way more effective and makes spraying for cooling irrelevant (not considering the benefits in the combustion chamber), but on a non-intercooled car there is a good benefit to spraying for cooling since the turbo exit temps can climb up to around 400F.

 

[YEEE85]

What you want to look at is the latent heat of vaporization. Specific heat or heat capacity of the liquid plays a negligible part. The latent heat of vaporization for Meth and E85 is close, so you will get a similar benefit for cooling. Meth can run way richer though than E85, so you will get more cooling on the compression stroke which can suppress detonation better. With water, the latent heat of vaporization is about 2x.

You also have to look at the saturation temperature (boiling point) at the manifold pressure you are targeting. This temperature rises as pressure rises. Water has a much higher saturation temperature than Meth or E85, so ultimately you can cool more with the E85, but it takes twice as much to get there.

The benefit to pre turbo would be if you have your turbo absolutely maxed out and you do not want to put a bigger turbo on (bigger turbo is better). Since the entire engine system is ultimately limited by volume flow, increasing density in the scroll, which a pre-turbo setup would do, can allow a little more mass flow from the turbo itself. Mass flow is what make power.

Once you spray down to the saturation temperature, spraying more will not cool the charge anymore. At 20 psig, that is going to be around 200 degrees F. A good intercooler is way more effective and makes spraying for cooling irrelevant (not considering the benefits in the combustion chamber), but on a non-intercooled car there is a good benefit to spraying for cooling since the turbo exit temps can climb up to around 400F.

That was kind of my basis- e 85 having about %75 latent heat as meth and %50 more energy density. I hear of people running alky along with E85, so I though, why not run E85 up stream since you already have it in your tank and present at the fuel rail. Until recently, I didn't understand that you could adjust fueling through the Scan Master- so potentially you could tune around the added density.
An upstream injector driver would be able to ramp up fueling as the boost climbs and then a guy could run an actual injector. This would be a stand alone controller and also would be independently tuneable. The high flow fuel rails I have looked at would be easy to tap into.
My whole point in doing this would be to help keep the car running safely and reliably while hopefully adding some power. And also to simplify things-(after greatly complicating everything) We have a quick trip on every block around here and they all sell corn juice. I like only having to put gas in the tank and nothing else to fuss with. And running one big fuel pump (hellcat) in the tank.
Following the train of thought about making more power with the same turbo maxed out, wouldn't that mean equal power without working quite so hard? Cooler air = more air flow, right? or not necessarily? I see this and I think driveability and throttle response.
I'm not trying to build the ultimate wrung out hot air Buick here- this is my first turbo car and my second regal- the first one was an 85 v8 I bought in high school that I never should have sold.
Since I already have the Alky system installed, when I do go to E85, I just might fill the alky tank with it and see what happens. It would be fun to get some IAT numbers and compare. At some point I will simply put an inter cooler on the thing, but when I do that I want to go balls deep on a built motor and trans and that's a ways off.

 

[Nigel]

The power to drive the compressor depends on the mass flow and the efficiency, not sure how that is effected by spraying in front of the compressor, but I am guessing the impact on compressor shaft power required is negligible. I can't say if the alky pump will like e85 (15% gasoline), that would be something to check. Casper's used to sell a seventh injector, it came off the pressure tap on the fuel rail and opened with a solenoid. If I was looking to do a set like your talking about, that is how I would do it.

As far as IAT, you are not going to get an accurate reading if you are spraying. You will wet the sensor and end up reading what the fluid temperature is in the tank once you spray to saturation, and that is assuming you can locate the sensor in a place that it is not directly impacted by the spray.

 

[YEEE85]

How accurately can you extrapolate IAT data from EGT data? That is interesting that they used to sell a kit to do this- means I'm maybe on to something worthwhile. Then again it must not have been too popular- then again maybe there weren't too many people running e-85
Thanks guys for the information and feedback this is interesting stuff.