the folks at MIT are up to something...

[Tigran Varosyan]

This article is SO MUCH HOT AIR!! 

"Cohn and his colleagues found that if ethanol is introduced into the
combustion chamber at just the right moment through the relatively new
technology of direct injection, it keeps the temperature down..." 

Man, I am glad someone funded this idiot to figure out what guys in my
3000GT club have been doing for about 15 years now! And that is not to say
that they invented the concept - it has been in use for the Nissan guys on
the 280Z's since the 80's and I am sure that even they got the idea
elsewhere! Direct injection or not, the use of ethanol, water, methanol and
various mixes thereof has been known to drastically reduce knock for decades
now. The Nazis used ethanol to control knock on the ME109 fighter planes! I
myself had designed and implemented my own propane injection system that ran
on my turbo 3000GT for over a year to control knock - and did so VERY well.

"Both turbocharging and direct injection are preexisting technologies, and
neither looks particularly impressive. Indeed, used separately, they would
lead to only marginal improvements in the performance of an internal
combustion engine. But by combining them, and augmenting them with a novel
way to use a small amount of ethanol, Cohn and his colleagues have created a
design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine"

Ummm, the Mazdaspeed6 already sports direct injection and a turbo - and has
for over a year now. I am sure that by now there are dozens of them running
around with aftermarket ethanol knock control systems. What are these guys
researching?

4 years ago my 3000GT (222HP NA) was dynoed at 623AWHP (which means that the
engine was cranking out well over 800HP). I was running 26 pounds of boost
on 98 octane race gas and my propane injected knock control system. Can get
a medal from MIT or something?

Thing that bothers me is that nimrods totally unaware of much in the car
world write these articles trumping useless research as if it was something
worth writing about. If these MIT guys are doing something interesting,
let's hear about it! But this article is pure BS! There should be some
qualifications required to write technical articles like this and the author
obviously does not come close!

Sorry Jason, not ragging on you, but I guess watching some guy at MIT
getting funded to do "research" on a "new concept" that is in fact 20+ years
old hit a nerve with me. FYI direct port injection is nothing new either -
the technology is actually more than 100 years old. Every diesel engine on
the face of the planet uses it!

Tyson Varosyan
Technical Manager, Uptime Technical Solutions LLC.
tyson at up-times.com
www.up-times.com 
206-715-TECH (8324)
UpTime/OnTime/AnyTime 

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-bounces at audifans.com] On
Behalf Of Jason Kohls
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 4:03 PM
To: quattro list
Subject: OT: the folks at MIT are up to something...

and it sounds pretty impressive...
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18304/
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