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Simple Device Claimed To Boost Fuel Efficiency By Up To 20%
Ponca City, We love you writes "Temple University physics professor Rongjia Tao has developed a simple device that could dramatically improve fuel efficiency in automobiles by as much as 20 percent. The device, attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector, creates an electric field that thins fuel, reducing its viscosity so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. Because combustion starts at the droplet surface, smaller droplets lead to cleaner and more efficient combustion. Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed an increase from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost, and a 12-15 percent gain in city driving. 'We expect the device will have wide applications on all types of internal combustion engines, present ones and future ones,' Tao wrote in the study published in Energy & Fuels. 'This discovery promises to significantly improve fuel efficiency in all types of internal combustion engine powered vehicles and at the same time will have far-reaching effects in reducing pollution of our environment,' says Larry F. Lemanski, Senior Vice President for Research and Strategic Initiatives at Temple."
Snakeoil as has been evidenced with piles of other products that claim to do the same thing.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I'm not a car person, but my impression is that if you go to Europe you'll find that off-the-shelf cars are a lot more fuel-efficient than off-the-shelf cars
in America.
They should be available in America but they are not.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
The device, attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector, creates an electric field that thins fuel, reducing its viscosity so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine.
Oh come on please stop it. This has been busted.
There has been wave of fuel efficient bikes in India after Honda introduced 'Hero Honda' bike with fuel efficiency as high as 60 Kmpl (142 miles per galon). Before that 2 wheelers had peak efficiency of 25-20 Kmpl (70mpg).
Vehicles with fuel efficiency as high as 100Kmpl (236 mpg) have been launched by some companies. I always wondered what made it possible and what technology they use.
hilarious
This same "scientist" was promoting a magnetic device to do the same thing two years ago.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2006/11/03/erin-brockovich-gets-your-attention-but-can-magnets-improve-fue/
Strange that we don't all have them bolted to our engines by now...
1. Snake oil.
2. Fuel injectors do a pretty good job atomizing fuel
3. Modern cars do not need another random electric field
4. Where is the double blind testing?
I've got one of these and together with the fuel line magnets, electric turbocharger and hydrogen generator I have fitted I find the gas tank actually fills as I drive!
No you idiot, the car companies threatened to kill them if htye sold it when the last people came up with this inventionn! Magnets do some INCREDIBLE things with science and people's energy fields. But I don't care what you think; I know the truth! Ever since I started wearing my magnet wrist watch I haven't needed birth control!
So there, suck on that--ha HA!
OK, going to increase my mileage by doing it myself, I'll just hook up some battery cables to my fuel lines to charge the gas. Alrighty then, black lead to ground, other end to fuel line. Check. Red lead to positive terminal, check. Now, I'll complete the circuit, just let me affix the read lead to the fuel l
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
>With pressure to meet CAFE standards, don't you think Detroit would have deployed such tech years ago if it really worked?
You know, in the late 80s and early 90s you could buy a cheap non-hybrid car that got 40+ MPG easily. And today a hybrid Camry gets, what, 33 MPG?
It's not a coincidence. CAFE standards haven't been raised from 27.5MPG since 1990. (http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/CARS/rules/CAFE/overview.htm)
It wasn't till late last year that congress and the president passed a new law raising fleet efficiency goals to 35MPG by 2020.
So you're right, but just in the opposite direction. Now that Detroit has pressure on it to raise efficiency standards again, I expect to start seeing devices like this come out.
The way to demonstrate these things in a rigorous manner isn't to bolt them on a car and drive them around for a few months.
The way to do so is to bolt them into a test rig, where the engine can be placed under load in a precisely controlled manner, under identical conditions, as many times as required.
There are any number of universities (and, presumably, independent labs) which have such test rigs.
Until this device has been tested under such conditions, and given the extensive history of "fuel saving" devices which do no such thing, it's safe to assume this is snake oil.
That said, I gather Temple is a reputable university, and one does not get to be chair of Physics at such a university without a track record of quality research.
Either Prof. Tao is a genius who has done the seemingly impossible, the PR flack who did this press release has horribly misinterpreted the study and Prof. Tao, or Prof. Tao should start clearing out his desk forthwith for embarrassing the university.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Long term option? Not at all. The oil in Alaska and offshore doesn't last forever. It is a mid term solution at best.
Snakes on the other hand can simply be bred, making snakeoil a renewable and CO2 neutral resource.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Half the reason my new fuel efficient car gets better mileage is because it has a fuel efficiency measurement and I try to improve it. Result: I drive differently than I do in the other car.
The only way to see if these devices really work is to see if they improve efficiency when the people don't know they are there.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And which car would that be? I notice you don't cite any name for it. Without citations, you can say anything and it could just as easily be completely false.
Citroen AX, Citroen VISA, Ford Escort 1.8 diesel, Ford Sierra 1.8 diesel, Vauxhall Cavalier, Vauxhall Astra, Vauxhall Nova, Peugeot 205 D...the list is endless outside of continental America. And yes, I'm taking into account we have a bigger "gallon" than you.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
More safety features, higher power consumption, more powerful engines, heavier/bigger cars.
Adding in anti-lock brakes, airbags, large crumple zones, heated seats, air conditioning, cd players with built in satellite radio, devices that perform sexually acts on you, power steering, power windows, power adjustable seats, et cetera all increase total power consumption/weight of the car. Accidents have become safer, driving has become more comfortable, but the result is a car that weighs more and needs more power to get from point A to point B.
Largely, this is a result of demand: as consumers became aware of crash tests, safety features, et cetera, they were less likely to purchase (demand) cars that fail to provide adequate safety by modern standards.
It's not some conspiracy, it's simple physics: it takes less energy to move a smaller mass from one point to another.
The problem I see with this device (and by extension any device or method used to improve gas-mileage in vehicles powered by fossil-fuels) is that it just serves to extend a technology that should've been abandoned decades ago.
Rather than solving the problem, i.e. our dependency on fossil-fuels, we are treating the symptoms of it.
This is just a band-aid. We're ignoring the fact that our vehicles need to be powered by something sustainable. This is where the research should be pointed - to alternate forms of energy for our cars. Not to prolong this addiction to gasoline.
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
60+ posts all yelling snake oil, all from people clearly with little or no engine experience.
While this may or may not be snake oil, the theory behind the gain is sound -- I don't know if people missed or don't understand that he's talking about diesel engines, not gasoline or understand that diesel is basically oil, its considerably more viscous than gasoline is.
Atomization of diesel has always been an issue with it. There's a reason the engines heat the fuel (the opposite of what you do with gasoline) before injecting into the engine -- it helps thin it down and helps atomization.
I can't say what a magnetic field may or may not do to it -- possibly nothing, perhaps something about the way he rigged it is simply heating the fuel.
Knee jerk reactions, however, from people who clearly don't understand how diesel engines work, is more useless than a snakeoil charlatan -- because real innovations can be lost.
Perfect example: I had someone tell me that a particular half in thick plate made of some sort of composite plastic that goes between a carburetor and intake manifold on a car was snake oil just like the "turbo twist" or whatever those metal fins sold to go in an engines intake.
The guy didn't understand how carbs work -- didn't understand how much heat a plate like that blocks from the fuel bowl in the carb, or how much the increased linear path through the carb helps to stabilize the atomization of fuel, making it burn more consistently. So he was calling snake oil on a part that, frankly, is a requirement on a carbed engine.
So everyone, be skeptical but holy crap, chill out. As yourself if your opinion is educated before you go assuming its correct.
also:
1992 Honda Civic HB VX 40/50 mpg
and the regular edition of the geo metro, also sold as the suzuki swift, chevy sprint, and pontiac firefly got 38/45 mpg.
Give me a break. Sorry, the "big" car guys, GM, Toyota, Ford, Mercedes, et al know the physics of combustion very well.
I have been chasing the problem in my spare time for years. I remember an invention I had in high school auto-shop, in 1978 (I was an electronics nerd and gear head) of drilling hole in a distributor cap, fastening a mirror to the rotor and using opto-electronics to detect the rotation and fire a small coil for each spark plug. I was able to run the car without a high voltage distributor. I should have patented it, because cars more or less work like that now. Anyway, I digress.
"Droplet Size" has been handled quite effectively by increasing the fuel injector pressure in the newer cars.
You aren't going to come up with a solution those guys haven't thought about. The only thing you can do is come up with an invention that they are unable to sell. Look at something like Nitrous Oxide or some other oxidizer, now, if you beef up a four cylinder engine to take the increased torque and rework the carboration/fuel injection control so that it is a seamless boost, you could run a much bigger car on a much smaller engine. Most cars are very fuel efficient while running, but suck down gas on acceleration. The over all fuel economy is how much gas a vehicle needs to maintain its speed, and the amount of power required to do that is a fraction of the capability of the engine, but to get the acceleration you need, you need the extra displacement.
So, even though you may need a 5.2 liters of engine displacement for performance, you need far less for maintaining speed, so why not start small with a four cylinder, and use something like NOS to bridge the difference? That's what a turbo or a super charger does. By compressing the air into the intake system, you are making your 4 cylinders effectively larger by allowing them to take in more air and fuel. Turbos, however, have a bad but improving performance curve. They have nothing at the start, and "lag" performance over a bigger motor. NOS doesn't suffer that problem.
So, if you can find a cheap and plentiful and safe oxidizer gas and can make the boost clean, you'll be rich.
add 2 x 250lb adults and a fat kid or three, and theres an extra 1000 to haul.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
[...]devices that perform sexually acts on you,[...]
This is a bad example in your list, as they are nothing new.
They are still available these days, as they were in the 70s. Usually not for sale. Typical monikers for these devices that do not charge directly for their operations are "girlfriend", "boyfriend", "mistress", "husband" or "wife". If in need you can always try to rent them, this version is often called "prostitute" or "hooker", though in many countries sold under euphemisms as "escort" or "masseuse".
This post is not a recommendation of their use, particularly not while driving. While their use may have a bad effect on your fuel usage, the main concern is safety.
RTFA?
From the 2nd link (the ACS-published article)-
"A voltage is applied on the two meshes to produce an electric field of around 1.0 kV/mm between the two meshes. The device consumes very low electric power, lower than 0.1 W."
Also, the ACS article alludes to this being an "electrorheological" effect- ...question is, is diesel fuel (and, since the first article alludes to this being useful to other types of internal combustion engines, gasoline for that matter) an electrorheological fluid? Maybe, maybe not. I'm certainly not qualified enough to tell but I do agree this should be given proper scrutiny and experimentation by others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrorheological_fluid
"Electrorheological (ER) fluids are suspensions of extremely fine non-conducting particles (up to 50 micrometres diameter) in an electrically insulating fluid. The apparent viscosity of these fluids changes reversibly by an order of up to 100,000 in response to an electric field. For example, a typical ER fluid can go from the consistency of a liquid to that of a gel, and back, with response times on the order of milliseconds. The effect is sometimes called the Winslow effect, after its discoverer the American inventor Willis Winslow, who obtained a US patent on the effect in 1947 [1] and wrote an article published in 1949 [2]."
In either case, the thought of applying 10kV (1kV/mm for 1cm) to each fuel line gives me the creeps. I know there's very little (if any) oxygen inside the fuel line to ignite it but if a leak were to start.... eek.
the real at&t mix
Yes, the theory is plausible. That does not make it correct. For one thing, diesel engines are totally different in their fuel management from gasoline engines. What works on one is extremely unlikely to work on the other.
Second, reducing fuel surface tension is already very old news. Additives (detergents) already do this and hydrocarbon fuels already have very low surface tension compared to water.
While [plausible, the theory does not stand scutiny. Diesel fuel has very low dipole moments and is not affected by magnetic or electric fields. If it were, the tiny (micron) passages inside a modern CDI injector would ground/neutralize it anyways. This report is particularly bad since they do not record/report any decrease in exhaust temperature, a necessary sign of increased efficiency (work extraction from heat energy).
Even as recently as 2002 you could buy a 44mpg highway Civic. No, not a hybrid - it was the "HX" model with lean-burn engine.
The carmakers are deliberately pushing hybrids because they are "sexy", but really any sufficiently small engine will get great economy. VW sold a gasoline Lupo that got 60mpg in Europe, a diesel version that got almost 90mpg, and soon will be releasing a 2-seater that gets 250 mpg (all highway numbers).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
For a number of reasons.
First of all the work is devoid of hype, mysterious "black boxes", is well-documented, links to established physics known since 1905 and 1959, and actually gives a credible explanation, verified in detail, of why we are seeing this improvement.
Secondly, prof. Tao's work spans at lest 2 years, witness this http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/2006/20/i05/pdf/ef060072x.pdf?sessid=2827 article, by the same prof. Tao, from 2006. In that publication, the authors properly relate their own work to much earlier theoretical work on viscosity (from 1905) that describes how viscosity of a fluid changes if you suspend a small amount of non-interacting spherical particles in it and later work (1959 by Krieger and Dougherty) on how much the viscosity changes. when you suspend a not-so-small amount of particles. The earlier work was backed up by experiments.
So up to that point we have the "thinning" effect on viscosity by suspending inert particles in a fluid, and it's solid physics to boot. Now what does this all have to do with magnetic or electric fields?
Well, it turns out that the thinning effect depends on the size of the particles you suspend in it. That's not so surprising either, and (again) experimentally verifiable.
Now here comes the trick: if you take a fluid that has large molecules in it that can be polarised by an electric or magnetic field that is strong enough to orient the particles despite the Brownian motion, you will see that short-distance order emerges in clusters of polarised molecules within the liquid. The net effect is as if you were seeding the liquid with particles. Now that's interesting. If you leave on the field for several minutes, the short-distance order extends a bit and you get fairly large ordered structures within your fluid, leading to an increase in viscosity. So there is an effect, but if you leave the field on for a long time it makes your liquid more viscous, not less. However, and this is the second trick, if you switch off the field soon enough, the molecules have enough time to become so polarised that short-distance order ensues, but not long-distance order. The net effect is that the "particles" (in reality small clusters of polarised and more-or-less ordered molecules) remain small. This effect is described in detail and the article describes tests that verified the effect. The level of detail coupled to the careful description of the underlying physics again make this claim credible.
And yes, with enough fiddling you seem to be able to tune your field strength and pulse duration so that you get an amount of polarised clusters that will measurably decrease the viscosity of your liquid. By about 9% or so. That seems pretty solid too.
Now about the applications. The first thing they though about was decreasing the viscosity of crude oil in pipelines. That will save a little energy if you're pumping lots of viscous oil through long cold pipelines. Nine percent isn't nothing, but it's not a great gain either. That was the state of affairs reported in Tao's 2006 paper.
The second application (Tao's 2009 paper) however is in internal combustion engines. As the article avers, lower viscosity leads to smaller droplets when fuels is injected. And smaller droplets seem to cause a cleaner and more efficient combustion. In fact, the authors report tests on a diesel engine by Cornaglia Iveco that showed a 5.5% efficiency improvement. Of course this result still has to be confirmed by independent tests, but its modest claims and well-publicised details make it thoroughly credible.
To produce the final results, the authors modified their device and claim to have obtained 20% efficiency improvement on a Mercedes-Benz diesel engine. The centerpiece
Want to massively improve fuel consumption nationwide? Make a fuel consumption meter mandatory in all cars. The display should show real-time consumption and average over the last fifty miles, in a prominent place.
I'm betting overall driving style would improve dramatically if people could see their consumption as they drive into the gas station forecourt.
No sig today...
All you need is a high enough electric field and your typo injection efficiency will go up.
You ever drive a Metro? There's a reason why GM stopped making them, nobody wanted them. They were completely gutless little boxes that could barely get out of their own way. Same goes for the Civic.
I read both the blurb and the published journal article. One thing that impresses me is the clear language used to describe the work. Tao explains both the basic theory and testing method succinctly - even a no-math guy like me understood it clearly. He even accounts for the difference between the Iveco tests and the dynamometer results. The science is very clear. I had a lot of research methods training as an undergrad and I really can't poke any holes in the article. The best research reports are simple, short and narrow in scope; this paper is all 3.
The really exciting part is the simplicity of the method. Hell, you could probably build one of these things yourself. If it pans out, and it looks like it should, this is a big deal.
Go Temple Owls!! (disclosure: I'm an alum)
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Don't know if it's a fraud or not, but there is an easy way to tell. If it comes incorporated into your new Honda, then it's for real. If they try to sell it to you as a DIY kit, it's a fraud. The car industry is competitive enough that it would kill for a 3% increase in MPG, let alone more than 10%.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
What? The "magnetic permeability" of a non-magnetic substance?
Yes. Vacuum has a magnetic permeability. If it didn't, there could be no electromagnetic radiation (some would say that if its permeability were zero, the radiation would be infinite, as the Poynting vector is proportional to 1/permeability). Did you look at the link you provided?
To reduce fuel consumption (in a petrol powered car) is to have a small 10kW gas turbine providing time average power connected to a small ac induction generator continuoulsy charging a battery pack and capacitors connected to a high voltage dc bus. Then you use a 3 phase inverter using IGBT switching elements in a sensorless vector drive configuration, connected to a 100 year old three phase induction motor (air or water cooled) this would see at least 50% improvement on efficiency, but because its possibe and it would reduce the need for fuel by at least 50 percent, the current politic will not allow it.
What *I* heard about it is that if you put a Time Cube in it, and install it on your water pipes, you'll get instant health!
Towards the Singularity.
I've read the FA (briefly) and I'm not impressed. The graphs of the difference in size distribution show little difference. The Cornaglia Iveco tests apparently showed an improvement of "5.5%...with an error bar of 2%" which is far less than the 20% they claim and likely to be experimental error. The Mercedes-Benz test "was repeated for 3 h and had an error within 5% ...power output increased to 0.443 hp" which has too many digits, indicating a lack of awareness of accuracy. (Also, why imperial units, and did they mean "continued" rather than "repeated"?). The "continuous road tests" show no data or controls and are worthless, as others have pointed out. The very fact that they are mentioned is suspicious. In the discussion they talk about "our technology, developed on the new physics principle" without explaining what new physics is involved (and it's incorrect grammar). If this was peer reviewed, I would say they did a pretty sloppy job. If it's not peer-reviewed, it's worthless.
Phil McKerracher
I'm doubtful of this device too, but come on -- MythBusters is not a reliable scientific laboratory. Their pseudoscientific method seems to be:
"We heard that doing A can cause B. We tried doing something like A a couple times and didn't get B. Therefore nothing like A can cause B."
You can prove something is possible by doing it, but you can't prove something is impossible by not doing it. I can't run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, but that doesn't prove that another human with better knowledge and ability can't.
Your post proposes a
( ) mechanical (X) thermal ( ) gravitational (X) electrical (X) voodoo
approach to create infinite/cheap energy. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws.
( ) You made a math error
(X) You have made a faulty assumption
(X) You don't understand physics
( ) You keep saying "greater than unity"
(X) You're relying on self-reported data
(X) You're relying on an uncontrolled experiment
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) Mechanical Friction
(X) Physical constants
( ) Laws of motion
(X) Laws of thermodynamics
( ) Asshats
( ) Gravity
(X) Turbulence
( ) Division by zero yielding undefined result
( ) Unit conversions
( ) Unavailability of infinately strong materials
( ) Unavailability of a perfect vacuum
( ) Solar heating
( ) Stuff that's lighter than air still having mass
( ) Translation losses
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
(X) Smarter people than you have tried to do this before
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
I am not a crackpot.
Electric field isn't a myth.
It works and is routinely used in research to feed mass-spectrometers with samples from liquid origin (the experiments are called LC-MS : liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectromety, the electric field device is called an ESI : electrospray ionisation).
What makes it a snake oil, is that ESI works on electrically chargeable subtrates, at the point where the liquid is vaporized, i.e.: it is done by the tip of the needle that vaporize and inject some sample, consisting (for exemple) of proton-charged peptides (= positively charged).
It just *CAN'T PHYSICALLY WORK* inside a fuel line were the fuel is both under pressure and liquid (no vaporizing there, it's the injectors which do vaporize) AND where the fuel is neutral (diesel is just fat/oil. No charges thus no electric field could have an effect on it)
Ultrasonication as you propose, is the only process which could have an effect on an electrically neutral fuel. But as said by other /.ers, it should be at done at the injector's level, not inside the fuel line.
Disclaimer : I work in Proteomics (where LC-MS on peptide is a very common analysis method).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
looking at the PDF of their paper reveals some weird stuff.
After a lot of blabbing they admit the viscosity change is only 10%. Looking at the curves for Diesel fuel viscosity, that's equivalent to heating the fuel another 10 degrees C.
In their "tests" they used an injector pressure of 200PSI. Typical cars use 2,000 PSI and some of the newer Diesels use up to 22,000 PSI! Makes you wonder why they used such a low pressure.
Their real-world test was with a Mercedes Benz diesel engine hooked up to a dynamometer, but apparently running AT IDLE. A fuel consumption of 500 grams per hour. A power output of 1/3 horsepower or so. Does not sound like typical engine operating conditions.
I would be very wary of this device given the bizarre test conditions.
Uh... No, not really, electric fields and magnetic fields are related, but don't effect each other when static.
Also, this device appears to actually give a charge to the fuel, which is a completely different concept than exerting a field on it. Should work to improve efficiency if the cgarge imparted is significant. Of course, that might be an extra tenth of a mile per gallon, will have to wait for third party testing.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
So that means you could have gotten better fuel economy with the same horsepower, right? I would have made that choice, personally.
That's exactly what it means. It's the same thing. You can have more power for the same amount of fuel, or the same amount of power and better economy. There is no choice to be made here.
More than likely, his subconcious need for the device to work led to a more conservative driving style - resulting in the increase. Things you may do to the fuel far back in the fuel line will be completely negated once it gets spurted through the injectors. http://www.omninerd.com/articles/Improve_MPG_The_Factors_Affecting_Fuel_Efficiency
When you understand your disbelief in other gods, then you will understand my disbelief in yours.