In 1975, Honda was granted the U.S. Patent 3878826 for instructions on how to manufacture an engine with a third manifold. The patent was secured because the CVCC engine for the Honda Civic has a second intake manifold. This technology is now being put to reduce fuel consumption by National Fuelsaver Corp. based in Boston.
An internal combustion engine commonly has only two manifolds - the intake and the exhaust manifold. These manifolds facilitate the entry of fuel to the engine as well as provide the exit of exhaust gases.
According to the abstract of the patented three-manifold engine: "A four-cycle internal combustion engine has eight cylinders each provided with a main combustion chamber and an auxiliary combustion chamber connected by a torch nozzle. A carburetor has a Venturi throat supplying rich mixture to each of the auxiliary chambers and other carburetor throats supplying a lean mixture to each of the main chambers. Although the effective cross sectional area of the Venturi throat for the rich mixture need not be larger than the effective cross sectional area of a single torch nozzle when the engine has four cylinders or six cylinders, an eight cylinder engine requires that the Venturi throat for the rich mixture be smaller than 1.4 times as large in effective cross sectional area as each of the torch nozzles."
According to the National Fuelsaver Corp., the third manifold can be used to increase the gas mileage of an engine by injecting platinum vapor into the combustion chamber. The platinum particles allow fuels to be burned almost completely. Conventional engines only burns about 70 percent of the fuel introduced into the combustion chamber. With the new patented technology, an additional 22 percent of the fuel can be burned.
According to the abstract of the patented gas saving technology: "An Elevated Expansion-Ratio Internal Combustion Engine has a substantially standard repeating four-stroke sequence for each cylinder, and the Engine includes for each cylinder: an intake valve, a combustion-gas exhaust valve, and a vapor return valve. A return manifold for vapor connects from the return valves of respective ones of the cylinders back into a passage ahead of a beginning portion of an intake manifold. Substantially during a predetermined part of each compression stroke in the sequence of strokes, the return valve opens after a closing of the intake valve, and thereafter closes at a time within the compression stroke corresponding to a predetermined position of the piston in the cylinder."
According to the developer of the gas saving technology, the use of platinum is already used on catalytic converters. What they just did is bring the platinum to the engine so that the unburned fuel will not be wasted.
According to Jack Leopold, the West Coast distributor for National Fuelsaver Corp., "The Gasaver injects a platinum vapor directly into the engine where the catalytic action of the platinum promotes faster and more complete combustion - with 15 to 25 percent savings in gasoline." Joel Robinson, the inventor of Gasaver, added that, "We're not doing anything new chemically; we're simply changing the location of where the process occurs."
With the increasing price of gasoline, a product such as that would surely be welcomed by many fuel-concerned individuals. With the money saved on fuel consumption, they can spend on upgrading the of their daily drivers.
