F-1 Oil burning to increase power

[billt460]

Originally Posted By: Ducked
Isn't octane number rather than cetane number the relevent performance parameter?


I agree. If you look up most anything concerning Cetane, it refers to diesel engines, not gasoline power plants.

 

[punisher]

Originally Posted By: bdcardinal
In the turbo era of the 80s they were using Xylene, Nitro-methane, and Toluene according to a couple books I have read.


...and trimethylbutane as well as benzene. The turbo era "witch's brew" was evil stuff. Spilling it on your skin was dangerous. Normally aspirated engines really didn't need an exotic fuel even though the compression was high. The high RPM meant the combustion times were extremely short, so short that detonation didn't actually have time to occur. The old turbo era fuels had PNs that ran into the mid 140 range, some think even higher.

 

[Jetronic]

Originally Posted By: billt460
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Isn't octane number rather than cetane number the relevent performance parameter?


I agree. If you look up most anything concerning Cetane, it refers to diesel engines, not gasoline power plants.


That's the point, the motor oil acts like a diesel fuel: very low octane rating, and very high cetane rating. So it's not a simple as leaking a fairly largequantity of oil into the combustion chamber.

 

[A_Harman]

I'm also wondering how Mercedes could leak the correct amount of lubricant at the correct time to supplement the gasoline. Seems like they would need some kind of a metering system, the presence of which they would have to explain to the FIA.

"Uh yeah, Charlie. That would be our injector lubrication system."

 

[Olas]

Is the oil leaking to the hot side of the turbo to increase turbine&impeller speed and having a beneficial effect on cylinder pressure over and above what normal combustion byproduct could achieve? Oil is formulated to be smokeless, and injected by a function mapped into the steering wheel?

 

[bdcardinal]

Originally Posted By: 02SE
In all Professional Racing, there are regulations. Anything that doesn't actually "break" those regulations, is fair game..


Exactly. Sounds like when Chad Knaus was caught having improper body modifications in-between the points that NASCAR checked. His argument was that since that wasn't a point where they measured, there was no rule regarding the dimensions. Basically saying that if there is no rule against it, it is legal.

 

[billt460]

Too bad Smokey Yunick isn't around in F1 today. He was the master of bending the rules.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Yunick

"Another Yunick improvisation was getting around the regulations specifying a maximum size for the fuel tank, by using 11-foot (3 meter) coils of 2-inch (5-centimeter) diameter tubing for the fuel line to add about 5 gallons (19 liters) to the car's fuel capacity. Once, NASCAR officials came up with a list of nine items for Yunick to fix before the car would be allowed on the track. The suspicious NASCAR officials had removed the tank for inspection. Yunick started the car with no gas tank and said "Better make it ten," and drove it back to the pits. He used a basketball in the fuel tank which could be inflated when the car's fuel capacity was checked and deflated for the race."

 

[Ducked]

Originally Posted By: Jetronic
Originally Posted By: billt460
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Isn't octane number rather than cetane number the relevent performance parameter?


I agree. If you look up most anything concerning Cetane, it refers to diesel engines, not gasoline power plants.


That's the point, the motor oil acts like a diesel fuel: very low octane rating, and very high cetane rating. So it's not a simple as leaking a fairly largequantity of oil into the combustion chamber.


Then I don't get "the point". Still seems to me that cetane number is an irrelevance in a petrol engine.

If its making it through the engine and burning in the exhaust like jet fuel (is there enough air?) to boost the turbo it might have some coincidental relevance, but those aren't the conditions in which it would normally be measured.

 

[Mitch Alsup]

If you want the fuel cheating in F1 to stop:: Have everyone obtain their fuel from a tanker truck which obtained its fuel from a random gas station nearby the week before the race. Everyone has the same fuel, and the engineers have to figure out how to make their high strung engines operate perfectly on any randomly obtained gasoline.

 

[Jetronic]

Originally Posted By: Ducked
Originally Posted By: Jetronic
Originally Posted By: billt460
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Isn't octane number rather than cetane number the relevent performance parameter?


I agree. If you look up most anything concerning Cetane, it refers to diesel engines, not gasoline power plants.


That's the point, the motor oil acts like a diesel fuel: very low octane rating, and very high cetane rating. So it's not a simple as leaking a fairly largequantity of oil into the combustion chamber.


Then I don't get "the point". Still seems to me that cetane number is an irrelevance in a petrol engine.

If its making it through the engine and burning in the exhaust like jet fuel (is there enough air?) to boost the turbo it might have some coincidental relevance, but those aren't the conditions in which it would normally be measured.


It's very relevant, high cetane fuel promotes detonation in a petrol engine.

 

[Ducked]

Originally Posted By: Jetronic



It's very relevant, high cetane fuel promotes detonation in a petrol engine.


I suppose cetane will tend to be inversely related to octane, but, (as I understand it, anyway) it isn't an exact inverse of octane, and it isn't operationally defined by detonation, like octane is.

So if you want to talk about detonation, it seems to make more sense to talk in terms of octane, because detonation is what octane is about.

 

[Shannow]

 

[Shannow]

lifted from this paper
http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD0779512

 

[Ducked]

Hey, whaddya know? A picture is worth 24 out of 34 of my words.

I suppose one reason to talk about cetane in this context might be that you don't actually have octane numbers for the oils in question, either because they havn't been measured, or because they can't be, since the test engine won't run on them.

In the latter case maybe they can infer the octane number by running a mixture, though that'll involve some assumptions.

 

[billt460]

Does anyone know if this oil is somehow injected into the exhaust portion of the turbo, like an afterburner? Or is this residual oil that has been through the engines combustion chambers? It would seem if it went through the combustion process it would be consumed there, and not in the turbo. I'm trying to make sense of all of this visually. Graphs don't help in that area. For the most part, when you see blue white smoke coming from an engine's exhaust, something is very bad, and it's not producing more power, but less.

 

[Shannow]

OK, and ignoring the differences in energy content per gallon...just call them equal for the thought exercise.

If you are allowed 100 gallons of fuel for the duration of an event, then you have an energy budget for the event, limiting power applied to get through the event without running out.

If you have unlimited oil consumption, and oil contains same amount of energy as the fuel (it actually holds more), then say you burn an extra gallon, you have 101% of the energy budget in the base case, and you can therefore put the extra where you need it.

Per the Cetane/Octane discussion, there's every likelihood that you don't let the oil dilute your power on process...you would LOSE far more in spark retard and fouling than you could ever gain back in energy consumed for the event...exactly like you suggest, burning oil there is bad.

So that leaves a couple of places that the energy could be utilised.
* turbine doesn't have an anti-knock requirement...could be added pre-turbine to add power to the turbine/generator/storage system. Need to make sure that there's enough air for combustion, pretty hard at full throttle, could be easily accomplished on over-run.
* afterburner...could be added to the exhaust post turbine, and add velocity/mass and therefore thrust...not the most efficient way of using it...could be done also.

If they were pushing oil through the engine combustion process (like through an unrestricted PCV type system) to overcome the fuel supply rate limit, then they've solved the problem with DI autoignition in the ring belts, the oil has at least equivalent octane rating to the fuel.

 

[Jetronic]

Keeping the turbo spooled up during over-run would be a TREMENDOUS advantage. That would be the most likely use of engine oil as a fuel, imo...

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: SLO_Town
In Formula 1 anything is possible. If these oil burn stories are true, I can easily imagine tens of millions of dollars being spent in a single season to develop, use, and perfect an engine oil that provided additional benefits beyond "ordinary" engine lubrication.

This kind of stuff is what makes F1 great. (and as someone said, bring back the 3 liter 12s - naturally aspirated and without fuel restrictions!)

Yes, that was the talk. It wasn't so much just oil burning on its own, but what additives could be introduced as well, just like you put, beyond "ordinary" engine lubrication.

As for fuel restrictions, fuel is always restricted. No one wants to carry more fuel than is necessary. Even in the refuelling days, you'd see them carrying the right amount to minimize their lap times and optimize their pit stops. As for chemistry limitations, the oil companies obviously have some R&D benefit for the real world if they are limited to what is essentially pump gas.

The V-12 era is over, and won't be back any time soon, for good or for bad. The engine manufacturers aren't interested. I'm not saying it couldn't work somehow, but the can of worms that would be opened would be pretty large and messy.

The fun part would be guessing what Honda would do. Would they throw their arms up in exasperation for wasting the last 3 years on a dead end? Or, would they be thrilled, because they should at least be able to master a basic ICE without a bunch of complex, confusing hybrid stuff on there?

 

[OPR4H]

Originally Posted By: Ducked
Hey, whaddya know? A picture is worth 24 out of 34 of my words.



It has some points on this. Cetane is about the moment the air fuel mix is ignited, the octane is before that, so there's no one correlaction between the two distant phases and repective events and/or facts.

 

[OPR4H]

As everyone here knows, the oil in the sys is used more as UCL, more than as fuel (it is also). Like MOO.