Internal-combustion engines – Charge forming device – Combustible mixture ionization – ozonation – or electrolysis
Patent
1993-05-12
1996-07-09
Cross, E. Rollins
Internal-combustion engines
Charge forming device
Combustible mixture ionization, ozonation, or electrolysis
F02B 7512, F02M 2700
Patent
active
055334903
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a fuel conditioning device, that is to say, a unit which can be installed in the fuel supply line of an internal combustion engine so as to condition the fuel before it reaches the combustion chambers so that the engine performs more efficiently.
Such a unit has application wherever engines are employed, but its major application is in connection with motor vehicles. It is known to employ lead compounds in motor fuel to improve octane ratings. However, concern for the environment has resulted in unleaded petrol being used with increasing frequency, but unleaded petrol either does not have the same octane rating, or is more expensive to produce than leaded petrol.
It has been known for some time that tin can also improve octane rating, and improve the cetane rating in diesel fuel. Tin may also deposit on moving parts inside a combustion engine, and so reduce friction and engine noise.
It has independently been suggested that conventional fuel subjected to a magnetic field shortly before entering the combustion chamber also appears to burn more efficiently. The precise reasons for this are not clear, but it may be that the fuel molecules are in some way aligned with respect to each other by the magnetic field and therefore are more easily combustible. Another theory suggests that the fuel molecules pick up a charge in the presence of the magnetic field which thus makes it easier for oxygen to combine with those charged molecules during the combustion process.
In EP-A-0 399 801 it has been suggested to combine these effects by washing fuel over tin alloy fuel additive pellets while the pellets are within the magnetic field of a magnet. This document describes and illustrates the use of a separated pair of relatively small ferrite magnets, facing one another, located by plastics spacers centrally within a plastics tube. The fuel flows through the tube, first past tin alloy cones lying in the magnets' field, then through a steel mesh disc and a plastics spacer, and then around and between the two magnets, before passing to the engine.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved fuel conditioning unit which combines the effects of a tin alloy additive and magnetic treatment in a novel, efficient and simple manner.
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention a fuel conditioning device comprises a housing defining a fuel flow path between a fuel inlet and a fuel outlet to the housing, and in the fuel flow path a tin alloy body and a magnet downstream thereof; wherein the fuel flow path is so configured in the region of the magnet, and the magnet has pole faces which are so disposed in relation to the fuel flow path, that substantially all fuel therein is constrained to flow past the said pole faces of the magnet; and flow distribution means are disposed in the fuel flow path immediately upstream of the magnet and are adapted to duct fuel wholly between the said pole faces of the magnet and the housing defining the fuel flow path.
Preferably the housing defining the fuel flow path in the region of the magnet is of ferromagnetic material, and substantially all the fuel in the flow path is constrained to flow between the pole faces of the magnet and the ferromagnetic housing.
The flow distribution means may comprise a plate, especially of ferromagnetic material, across the fuel path, provided with fuel flow apertures aligned with the fuel flow path between the pole faces of the magnet and the sides of the housing.
The tin alloy body is desirably shielded, as by the flow distribution means, from the magnetic field of the magnet. This has been found to give excellent fuel efficiency.
The magnet is advantageously an anisotropic permanent ferrite magnet, located centrally in the fuel flow path. Preferably the magnet is a block in the form of a flat cuboid with the poles on each of its opposite longer flat faces, and it is arranged with those pole faces parallel to the axis of the housing, directed outwardly towards the sides of the housing.
The arrangement ensures
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Pearce, J. A. The Chemistry Of Tin-Alloy Fuel Additives May 4, 1990.
Cross E. Rollins
Macy M.
Usher Robert W. J.
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