Fuel vaporization could boost gas mileage, cut emissions [View All]

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R. Colin Johnson - EE Times - (01/26/2009 5:08 PM EST)

PORTLAND, Ore. — Piggyback electronics and an add-on "vapor chamber" could be used to increase the mileage of existing automobile and truck engines by almost one-third while lowering emissions.

Vapor Fuel Technologies (Beavercreek, Ore.) claims it accomplishes this by vaporizing fuel and mixing it with super-hot air, enabling modified electronic control circuitry to coax the same horsepower out of engines while burning less fuel and cutting emissions. The company plans to offer retrofit kits for American vehicles within a year, and hopes to close deals to include its technology on new models from U.S., European and Asian auto makers by 2010.

"What we have is a fuel-conditioning system," said Raymond Bushnell, founder of Bushnell Engineering Inc., also of Beavercreek, the contract engineering company developing the fuel vaporization system for Vapor Fuel Technologies. "We are working with Unichip of North America, which is creating the necessary electronic control circuitry to integrate our vaporization system into a retrofit. So we can take this technology and put it on existing vehicles, typically the gas hogs."

Electronic modules from Unichip (Hillsboro, Ore.) are typically used to boost the performance of existing vehicles by intercepting signals from sensors and modifying their values before delivery to an engine control unit. Instead of increasing horsepower, a module being created by Unichip for Vapor Fuel Technologies will modify data flowing to and from the stock control unit to accommodate the super-heated vaporized fuel mix that provides increased fuel economy and lower emissions.

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