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Stupid car question -- air intakes and fuel distillation

Started by alanp, October 31, 2018, 04:36:29 AM

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alanp

In the Mad Max 2015 game (I have like 170 hours on that game, in steam... it's fun!), the V8 engine has several upgrade stages.

It probably says something about the Tim Taylor mentality in Mad Max, when the beginning, "Bantam V8" has a supercharger and a scott hat.

But, as you upgrade the V8 to moar powar, the air intake goes from the scott hat, to (IIRC, I don't hang around on that stage long) a big pipe, to TWO round pipes, to three pipes, to finally, like a really limited range set of panpipes, four round pipes going into the carburetters (and thence, the blower.)

What difference does stuff like this make?

Also, during the petroleum distillation process that happens in a refinery, is diesel unavoidable, or can the engineers do some jiggery-pokery to turn it into petrol? Because I'm wondering what Gastown do with all that diesel, if they can't turn it into something else.
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thesmokingman

without seeing it and based solely on your description, I'll assume we're talking about velocity stacks ... which make air flow better into a naturally aspirated engine and generally look pretty cool doing it. with a supercharger, they're purely aesthetic as the whole air intake went from vacuum  to boost and so long as the opening flows enough air it really doesn't matter much what it looks like. with that in mind, you'd see more horsepower with introducing an oxidizer (nitrous), an inter-cooler (because the supercharger also heats the air), or more boost.

as for "diesel" ... that's a generic term for literally any fuel that will function in a diesel engine (bio fuel, petroleum distillate, etc). narrow that down to petroleum distillate diesel and yes, you could continue fractional distillation of it into gasoline and other lighter and more volatile hydrocarbons.
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juansolo

Thinking logically about it, the ram air effect of these scoops should be mostly negated buy the dirty great compressor that sits between the scoop and the carbs/throttle bodies. Certainly as long as there's enough airflow to feed the compressor. I'd have thought the different designs would make bugger all real world difference.
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skyled

Crude oil is primarily a bunch of hydrocarbons of various lengths. During refining,  the oil is distilled, which separates the various lengths. Methane, Ethane...Octane...
But of course, Methane and other gases will primarily come out of a gas well, not an oil well.

Octane is just one of the lengths that comes out, and a bunch of other additives are used to get it to burn properly in a gasoline engine.

Various longer chains are used as diesel fuel, along with additives.

The lengths can also be cracked to produce shorter chains. So in theory, with enough cracking, oil could be turned entirely into methane and impurities, but it would be very costly.