Dual Fuel Systems
80mpg and performance from a vehicle over 2500lb: Read on!
Dual Fuel Summary
There are significant research efforts to improve the fuel efficiency and lower the emissions from motorized vehicles such as automobiles, trucks and buses. Hybrid vehicles offer one solution for improved fuel economy. Diesel fuelled vehicles also offer improved gas mileage especially when the diesel engine is coupled with a hybrid system and or the diesel engine is direct injected.
The idea to mix a small fraction of hydrogen and carbon monoxide with gasoline or diesel to improve the efficiency of a vehicle also has merit. The mixture of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and gasoline or diesel will burn in a highly lean (excess air added) mixture of fuel and oxidant. This allows for lean combustion of the fuel in an internal combustion engine that can be turbocharged and operates under a high compression ratio
While it is possible to reform gasoline into hydrogen and carbon monoxide, it is expensive and requires specialized catalysts and complicated onboard devices. It is not totally impractical to have a high pressure bottle of compressed hydrogen gas or a cryogenic tank of liquefied hydrogen as the source of hydrogen in the combined hydrogen and gasoline fuelled vehicle, but again this is an expensive option
In the high compression turbocharged internal combustion engine that is fuelled by a mixture of reformed gases and gasoline, the volumetric ratio of hydrogen and or carbon monoxide gas to vaporized gasoline is approximately one to five. This means that the onboard storage capacity of hydrogen is not as large as that of a hydrogen only vehicle. An invention recently developed by ITZ-A-GAZ Inc. of Tiburon California has the benefits of combining hydrogen and carbon monoxide gas with gasoline or diesel without the expense of an onboard Plasma Fuel Reformer or hydrogen storage tanks
The ITZ-A-GAZ® invention is based on having a dual liquid fuelled vehicle. The primary fuel used to propel the vehicle is either gasoline or diesel. The secondary liquid fuel is an alcohol optimally methanol. Methanol readily dissociates into hydrogen and carbon monoxide at a temperature as low as 300 degrees C. This dissociation reaction can be driven by the heat of the exhaust gases. In fact slightly more than 20% additional energy is gained in the products of the disassociation reaction and this additional energy is essentially recuperated from the hot exhaust.
The ITZ-A-GAZ® system has the following benefits: improved fuel economy; low initial cost; smaller fuel storage tanks; and the system can use readily available fuel infrastructure. The vehicle has a primary tank of gasoline or diesel and a smaller secondary methanol tank. Methanol is ten percent more dense than gasoline unlike liquid hydrogen that has only one eleventh the density of gasoline, therefore the onboard methanol tank is compact. Motorists simply fill both of the liquid fuels, gasoline or diesel and methanol, into their vehicles separate tanks at traditional service stations. The result is a Porsche on steroids with the fuel economy of a Civic. If coupled with a hybrid, the ITZ-A-GAZ® system is likely to be the first real car to get 80 miles per gallon and go from 0 to 60 in less than 6 seconds.
Patent Pending