Simple Device Claimed To Boost Fuel Efficiency By Up To 20% 674
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."
This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Snakeoil as has been evidenced with piles of other products that claim to do the same thing.
Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry. This sounds way too much like "the tornado" and various other devices with magnets that you put around the fuel line. This stuff has been around for years, and it's pseudo-science. With pressure to meet CAFE standards, don't you think Detroit would have deployed such tech years ago if it really worked? Cue the Detroit-BigOil-AxisOfEvil conspiracy theorists in 3... 2... 1...
Taken for a ride (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Taken for a ride (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuel standards in Europe are higher than for the USA though (higher RON fuel). You can tune european models of cars to get more power because of that, and some cars are meant to be run only on 'super unleaded' rather than just standard unleaded petrol (I think because you can get higher compression without pinking or something). That probably means that you can tune them to be more fuel efficient than US cars too, but someone will no doubt correct me on the details :)
busted. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on please stop it. This has been busted [wikipedia.org].
Because electric fields in cars are good.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:Taken for a ride (Score:1, Insightful)
cars on shelves? proof that everything in America is bigger!
Re:This is... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Slashdot: Fake News for Idiots, selected by Moronic so-called-Editors"
FFS. This is (a) clearly bollocks (b) these "devices you attach to the fuel line" have been around being sold by con-artists for at least TEN YEARS. Actually, it must be longer as I remember them from when I was AT SCHOOL!
I'm afraid that whoever put THIS rubbish up is clearly an Epsilon Minus semi-moron.
*sigh*
Snake oil (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Blind testing needed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
it's just an extension... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Knee-jerk /. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Yet more snake oil (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:Fuel Efficiency of Honda (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy way to massively improve fuel consumption (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Blind testing needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Proper testing would be testing in a lab, tabletop assembly, with a variety of engines, with full control of parameters (consumption, power, torque, etc)
Measuring in an actual car in road conditions is too imprecise.
Re:This...could be the real deal-RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
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%.
Re:This is... (Score:5, Insightful)
They did bust a magnet style device.
Anyway: If smaller fuel droplets help so much, I would assume engine engineers would have done this already by just adjusting the fuel injector with a different nozzle, much easier, much more trust worthy
A finer mist *does* improve fuel economy. That's why you should be having your car tuned up on a regular basis. Make sure the timing is accurate (if you have a car that doesn't have digital timing), make sure that the injectors are clean, etc. It makes a huge difference to fuel economy, and a parallel effect is better power/performance.
But that's the problem. Injectors are clean. People keep buying cheap gas, or driving their car too aggressively, and over time gunk builds up on the injector nozzles, affecting the misting ability, which hurts fuel economy. Engineers could design the best nozzle that's possible within the realm of physics, getting perfect misting, and if the owner doesn't take care of it then that gunk is still going to build up, and economy is still going to suffer over time.
Poor maintenance has a bigger effect on wasted fuel than bad driving and shitty design combined.
Re:This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
No one said the device doesn't do something to the fuel... The real question comes from whether or not modern engines already burn as much of the fuel as possible.
They have lab tests showing smaller droplets. Okay. So? That would only matter if modern engines don't already burn fuel fairly completely. By the rather straightforward reasoning that a car spitting incompletely burnt fuel out the exhaust pipe won't pass CA emissions standards (used in about half the US states), I think we can safely say that doesn't apply.
Now - Smaller droplets burn faster, so it makes sense this would boost torque (for those who don't know what a dynanometer does). That does not equate to better fuel efficiency, however. And if the head/valves/injectors/whatever can't deal with a peak pressure significantly greater than the intended design limit, you may end up paying a hell of a lot in repairs for that small boost in pickup.
You can measure a lot of things, but they don't mean "better". The classic mileage booster of adding water to your fuel also "changes" the fuel in a measurable way. It also makes your car run like crap and rots your valves and fuel pump.
Don't get me wrong, I would love this device to really work... But we don't need a magic wand, we need to look at why Europe can have 65MPG Ford (yes, the same Ford that has given us 15 years of single-digit MPG tanks) diesel hybrids, while we piss and moan in the US about whether to rase CAFE standards to a "competitively unfair" 35MPG.
Re:Taken for a ride (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the biggest reason for higher fuel efficiency in Europe is that fuel there has been more highly taxed for many years.
What do you pay in the US for petrol today - $4 a gallon? That translates into about GBP0.58p per litre at current exchange rates. The UK hasn't seen petrol prices that low for ten years. Current prices are nearer GBP1.11(petrol) - GBP1.25 (diesel) per litre. In US terms that is petrol at £7.50 a US gallon.
If you paid that much or fuel, you would care a lot more about fuel efficiency.
Ultimately Europeans are no greener than Americans - we are just being given more encouragement to be green by Adam Smith's "invisible hand".
Re:This is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, we have this thing. I'm no physicist, at least one with a college degree, but I see one really big problem with this method. A bottleneck. Specifically, an injector. This is the exact same problem that is inherent in the design of the "Tornado"®. Sure, it'll spin the air into a neato vortex, but that vortex goes to hell (in a handbasket) once it tries to maneuver through the intake manifold, and you're right back to laminar flow. Well, it looked good on paper (and TV).
Well I'm a chemist and I have the degree to prove it. You are right and you are wrong. Just because the fluid moves past the point of disturbance doesn't mean that it automatically and immediately becomes laminar. There will be a period of time before the flow settles back down. The question becomes, is this "settling" time long enough for the fluid to make it past the injector and affect the droplet size? Well that's the million-dollar question and you can't say for sure until it is tested through experimentation.
In this case it IS possible to form polar molecules and ions through the use of magnetism and electric fields. It will also take a period of time before these changes will be reversed. The questions are will these changes affect droplet size and can the magnitude of these changes be great enough by the time the fluid makes it past the injector. Those, again, are the million-dollar questions. The only thing which will answer these questions is thorough testing. Unless you have personally done scientifically valid testing on these claims you can't say for sure one way or the other whether this device will work.
Yes, in the past there have been a lot of "snake oil" devices but that doesn't mean that every device is a scam. The possibility exists that some might actually make a difference. We just have to rely on validatable testing so we can decide what is a scam and what will work.
Re:Easy way to massively improve fuel consumption (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
I disagree. Those that drive like hell or drive gas guzzlers know full well their gas consumption habits. Saying that putting a consumption meter in will make people drive better is like saying putting in an alcohol breath test in cars will detour drunken driving. Sure you might catch the casual offender but on the whole it's a waste of time, energy and money.
Re:Knee-jerk /. (Score:4, Insightful)
The paper makes reference to electrorheostatic properties of suspensions of spheres. The paper they reference is this one [acs.org]
You can see from the abstract that they are discussing the viscosity of organic compounds like neoprene latex. The idea is that if you pass a suspension of rigid spheres through a magnetic or electric field, the viscosity of the liquid changes. (BTW, I have no idea what that means, just trying to paraphrase from the abstract -- hope I got it right ;-) )
Tao et al then published a paper in 2006 showing that passing crude oil through a magnetic field reduced its viscosity temporarily. The paper is here [acs.org]. Then in their latest paper they show that diesel fuel is reduced in viscosity by 9% when passed through an electric field.
They then measured the droplet size of the diesel fuel when put through an atomizer. On average the particles were smaller. So they built a device for an engine and measured the power output using a dynamometer. They found a 20% increase in power using the same fuel consumption. Hence a potential 20% reduction in fuel consumption.
Now, I'm not a physicist. I don't even play one on slashdot. But I've read my share of scientific papers. This one isn't great. it just doesn't have any statistical rigor to back up their claims. They've got pretty pictures and charts, but I don't see any good numbers to tell me exactly what I'm looking at. However, I don't see anything particularly wrong either. Their method is simple and should be easy to reproduce. So maybe we'll get another group confirming their findings.
I'm with the GP here. I'm not going to call "Snake oil" until I see something to reasonably discredit their claims.
Re:This is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This...could be the real deal-RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Liquids are incompressible -- a least to a fix approximation. So the molecules can't get "crammed back together" very much. It's true that the properties you establish in a flow are going to be altered past recognition when you squeeze that flow through a narrow space, but that is not the claim here. The claim is not an alteration of the flow, but an alteration in the liquid's physical properties. Namely, the claim a change in viscosity, which if achieved would certainly alter the behavior of the liquid, most of all in a restricted flow.
The argument that devices resembling this and trying to achieve the same outcome have been junk only means that we have to look at how the claims are based very, very carefully. After all, we've known that heavier than air flight is possible forever, because birds do it; most machines that attempted it had no chance, not because the result was impossible, but because it couldn't be achieved that particular way.
If you could show that the claims of this device involve something like extracting more work from the gasoline than is thermodynamically possible, you'd have an airtight argument against it. For now, the strongest argument against this device is that it's claims haven't been replicated in controlled experiments mimicking real world conditions.
Personally, I'm not going to go out and restructure my investment portfolio because of the claims made for this device. There have been lots of physically possible claims that either didn't work, or were not economical because of their complexity or impact on engine wear.
MythBusted? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:This is... (Score:4, Insightful)
forgive me if I don't understand you, but ultrasound simply does not apply to the fluid phase of the injection process because it would have to be applied *before* the injector. Since the pump does it's best to present a solid column of fluid at the injector there won't be any effect.
Applying it after the injector would theoretically be possible but the engineering challenges in filling the combustion chamber with ultrasound would seem to me to be pretty formidable.
What the link to frozen diesel had to do with it is really beyond me...
Electric field isn't a myth (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org], the electric field device is called an ESI : electrospray ionisation [wikipedia.org]).
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).
Re:This...could be the real deal-RTFA (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't be a jerk. He knows that. In a science paper you are expected to round numbers to the accuracy of the measurement. Leaving the full precision is considered wrong, because it's misleading, pointless and just plain stupid. I learned this in high school, but many people don't learn it until college.
Re:This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Print head cleaning (Score:1, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I do *not* work at HP, Epson, etc, so the following is mostly from studying the behavior of fouled printers.
Also, not here to pick on one suggestion, just info for all.
I'm pretty sure the cleaning action for printer heads is still mechanical, ie: requires moving parts. It seems the printer makes the cartridges purge lots of ink onto a special pad that the heads then scrub themselves off against. The copious amount of ink involved depletes your reserves rapidly, and I'm pretty sure serves two purposes:
-an attempt to "blow out" any blockages initially, and
-provide sufficient ink solution to provide the suspension solvent as a cleansing (or at least loosening) agent for the scrubbin'.
oh, and...
-Make you buy more ink sooner.
Fuel doesn't have the problem of deliberately suspending lots of solids meant to dry into something durable, so that won't get encrusted on the end. Also, assuming the engine is in a fair state of tune and it's not "direct" injection (into the cylinder), the nozzle is just upstream of the valve, and there's not much chance of burn residue blowing back onto the nozzle. Blockages are more often the results of contamination that can't fit through the fine nozzle, but managed to slip past the more-flexible filter medium.
Diesels are of course a tad different.
Strong detergent additives, for temporary use only (they burn dirty) are the usual solution.
Although... I would be quite amused at a little micro-bot hanging out next to the nozzle like a window cleaner, occasionally shuttin' 'er down and giving the ol' gal a good scrubbin! It would look a bit like WALL*E, or the hover-bot that repaired the THX logo....
Re:This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
All my co-workers with their big SUVs, vans, and trucks complain about how much it costs to run them. Yet for the same money, they could have purchased a pretty sweet, high-quality car. And it would cost a ton less to maintain and drive.
Yet big is what we as a nation want, not good. Just about every Ford I've ever ridden or driven has been a pretty shitty vehicle. Yet they are all pretty decent sized. And that's what sells.
And to top it off, I get snide comments about my little Toyota from the big-vehicle, complaining about gas prices people. Why? Because it's not big. I metaphorically laugh all the way to the bank, as it initially cost 1/2 to 1/3 the price of their vehicle, is of equal or greater quality, and costs 1/4 to 1/2 as much to maintain and drive.
But I'm nowhere near a majority around here - probably only 10-20% of the population thinks the same way.
Re:This is... (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be new here.
Everyone knows the articles are crap... the discussion that follows is what makes this site worth visiting.
Re:Electric field isn't a myth (Score:2, Insightful)
"The small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector. With the use of a power supply from the vehicle's battery, the device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or reduces its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion than a standard fuel injector."
It's sad when so many slashdotters line up to shit on another persons hard work. It proves how unscientific the average slashdotter is. Repeat the experiments and prove him wrong or shut the fuck up.
Re:Electric field isn't a myth (Score:2, Insightful)
"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."
But, but, but some asshole on Slashdot said it was snake oil, so the guy must be a scammer. Oh, and mythbusters did a show about people selling devices like this and they were scams, therefore this must be a scam as well.
Seriously folks, the guy isn't trying to sell you his device or asking you to invest in his company. Unless I'm missing something besides the huge scientific chips on your shoulders, where's the scam.
Re:Electric field isn't a myth (Score:5, Insightful)
There are easier and more reproducible ways of measuring fuel efficiency than to drive around in a Mercedez-Benz (although I like driving a MB too...). One would be to hook up an engine to do a certain predefined amount of work (such as pump a predefined amount of water from a predefined height to another predefined height), and measure the fuel usage with and without the device, at different RPMs, etc... Those numbers would be much more useful for development, and also much more convincing when presented as a sales argument.
Choosing an "experiment" as ill-defined as driving around for six months in a car, is not particularly scientific, reproducible, or convincing. On the other hand, it is very likely to convince gullible people who would happily go along with any scam, as long as they thought it would save them some money. You, of course, are one of them.
Actually, he has already sold the idea to some poor suckers. From the article: "a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc.", and further down: "According to Joe Dell, vice president of marketing for STWA, the company is currently working with a trucking company near Reading, Pa., to test the device on diesel-powered trucks". And all this without a single reproducible experiment, nor a plausible explanation for why it should work even in theory... I rest my case. This is definitely a scam.
Re:This is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The caddy CTS (Score:3, Insightful)
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.