I view him as the poster child representing engineers who do not accept good enough as, well, good enough. I first met Dominick Carluccio a few years back in his capacity as a young engineer assigned to me as my technical liaison for a client. His role called for assisting my creative services agency in developing promotional and educational materials for a company specializing in cutting edge inhalation and particle exposure systems.

His clearly insatiable appetite to achieve mastery of what he already understood well impressed me. To his credit, he did so with a genial, unflappable confidence.

I recently learned that Dom had started his own company, Wurst Käse Engineering. You have got to love the name. I do. For his first product he directed his laser focus on what he considered to be the significant shortcomings of methanol injection systems available in the market.

Meet Dom and his kick-ass methanol injection system.

A sharp engineer’s insights inspires a quantum leap in methanol injection

Dom’s 2011 2-liter, 4-cylinder Volkswagen GTI came stock with 200 horsepower. Under his stewardship it presently pumps out a shade under 400 horsepower. It will easily plant your eyeballs against the back of your skull. Dom, however, has yet to be satisfied. Nonchalantly, he projects quiet confidence in his ability to extract even more power from his willing German 2-liter 4-banger. Methanol injection placed high on his list of intended upgrades.

An especially attractive upgrade for turbocharged And supercharged engines, methanol injection delivers a finely atomized mist of a water/methanol mixture to an engine’s cylinder fuel charge. The cooling effects of the mixture, lowers the temperature inside the combustion chamber. This reduces the likeliness of detonation (knocking) that can reduce performance, fuel economy and, worse, severely damage a high performance engine. As well, methanol provides the added bonus of increasing a fuel’s octane rating. This pays off with increased horsepower with proper tuning.

Unfortunately, Dom experienced great dismay upon surveying the quality of the methanol injection systems available in the marketplace. Upon expressing his disappointment to his, then, girlfriend Kelly Moran, her response makes clear why they are about to, now, become man and wife. Kelly says, “’He’s the kind of person that’s always looking to change the world with his inventions and always looking for that kind of outlet. And he loves cars and he’s always trying to make his car the best it possibly can be. When this opportunity came about, he saw the need for a better system in the marketplace. We discussed the opportunity and I said ‘you could do it better.’ Like, there was no doubt in my mind that he could do it.”’

In naming his burgeoning automobile high performance tuner friendly company, Wurst Käse Engineering, Dom displays an elevated sense of humor, a welcome but uncommon attribute among engineers, not unlike finding pearls in oysters.

As a gifted aerosol engineer, Dom possesses years of experience conducting research with applications including filtration, e-cigarettes, cigarette smoke, emissions, and environmental pollutants with particle sizes down to 2.5 nanometers in size. One nanometer equals one billionth of a meter (0.000000001 meter or .00000004 inches). You will not find either on your average ruler.

To be clear, an aerosol exists when tiny particles of a liquid or solid are suspended within a gas. When under pressure aerosols can be released in a fine mist as with a spray room deodorizer or exhaust emissions. Clearly Dom’s comfort in the micro particle aerosol

world uniquely qualified him to explore advanced solutions to aerosol applications like methanol injection.

When Dom’s aerosol engineer experience and tuner-skilled car guy interests collided with his disappointment in available methanol injection systems it produced a perfect storm. An inspired and revolutionary product ensued.

Ever the engineer, Dom says, “When I first started getting into methanol injection and thinking of actually implementing it, I inspected the nozzles of existing systems in regard to their performance and efficiency. I was not impressed.” Dom knew of the extensive research that had been performed on fuel injection nozzles. He says, The key to superior nozzle design is to facilitate creating the most surface area of the fuel being injected.” The logic being that the greater the surface area the more thorough and efficient the resulting combustion. Dom, knew that the best way to achieve that efficiency demanded a really good aerosol generator. In inspecting methanol injection kits on the market, the frequently crude designs surprised him. Dom says, “Not only did we see a lot of big droplets resulting in low use of available surface area but plenty of nozzle designs with all sorts of shortcomings.” Dom found nozzle designs relying on moving parts that could degrade resulting in wasted fluid and corrosion. Upon closer scrutiny Dom found systems relied on old nozzle designs used in home

heating oil burners with modifications to support methanol injection. Aghast at his findings and confident in his abilities, Dom set about to create and market a superior system.

In a wise first step he enlisted his market savvy chemist girlfriend and soon to be wife Kelly. In addition to being a social media digital native, Kelly possessed significant experience in test bench analysis for product assessment.

Together Dom and Kelly embarked on a close to 2-year research journey exploring the fine details of systems presently being sold. Dom says, “We identified the best products currently available and bought their kits. We built a test bench that simulated intake air and how quickly that intake air could decrease in temperature when injecting various amounts of water with different methanol injection kits.” Over the 2-year research period they succeeded in developing a standard for assessing performance and quality and the target specifications for what would become their system. At last the time had arrived to design their own.

Dom says, “All testing was conducted using my Volkswagen GTI as a test mule. Under heavy load, I observed the presence of some knock and pre-ignition. It demonstrated to me that a lot of opportunity existed for a better system.” It became evident that technology he had previously employed in biomedical research offered significant promise for an automotive application. This early work gave birth to the Wurst Käse Engineering tagline, “Science Meets Performance.”

Dom says, “One such breakthrough courtesy of our bio-engineering  test bench experience came with regards to determining the right particle size and the right concentration to achieve the best cooling capability with the least amount of liquid injected.” In other words Dom had a tool to research how to maximize the cooling effect while using the least amount of methanol mix. It resulted in a uniquely precise and efficient nozzle design.

 

Kelly and Dom dedicated two years to developing, refining and perfecting a nozzle that significantly elevates the bar for system efficiency, durability and simplicity. Dom says, “Based on the science we had to create the nozzle that would support our findings.” To start, Dom modeled his concept on SolidWorks 3D CAD design software. Then he and Kelly spent countless hours machining brass prototypes, testing different hole sizes, depths and combinations until they found themselves going in the right direction. With a working prototype completed they sent it to a gifted machinist and placed an order for their prototype in stainless steel. If seeing the first prototype in stainless did not make all the years of work worth it, putting it on the test bench surely did.

Dom says, “Our testing confirmed we had designed the best nozzle for optimizing methanol injection based on delivering small particles that cooled most efficiently.” However, with testing it became evident that different solutions and benefits had different types of performance gains.” Achieving the best performance demanded optimizing to deliver the right benefits, for example providing for more fuel, more air or both. Systems on the market with varying droplet size including some very big droplets lack the ability to provide the optimum cooling associated with homogeneous mixture ratio. Far surpassing the competition, Dom’s new methanol injection system possesses the ability to inject on and off very quickly combined with the capability to deliver consistent performance over a wide range of injection pressures. It does so by delivering a charge of consistent water/methanol solution to each of the runners feeding the cylinders. Dom, in thinking outside of the box, harnessed his scientific acumen in bio-technical aerosol engineering to advance automobile performance.

For the serious tuner or the serious car guy, the Wurst Käse methanol injection system delivers:

• Quicker evaporation and efficient cooling
• Better homogeneity of sprayed fuel resulting in equal delivery to different cylinders
• Greater efficiency by delivering the same cooling characteristics while using half the methanol/water mix.
• Greater cost effectiveness by spending less money on methanol
• Greater range on the same tank or use of a smaller tank
• Better atomization at low pressures to make the most of a variable flow system

Now, after almost three years Dom and Kelly stand ready to bring Wurst Käse Engineering’s methanol injection system to market. In reflecting on all that future newlyweds Kelly and Dom put into making the Wurst Käse methanol injection system a reality, Kelly laughs and says, “We have far more planning time in Dom’s system than our wedding, and that’s fine with me.”

Click to view very cool video of Wurst Käse bench testing