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.
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*
Re:This is... (Score:5, Funny)
these "devices you attach to the fuel line" have been around being sold by con-artists for at least TEN YEARS
TFA says he's getting a patent. The US patent office wouldn't be so clueless as to issue a patent if there were prior art, now would it? ;o)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And a patent is certainly not evidence that the invention actually works.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
"Repeat the experiments and prove him wrong or shut the fuck up."
Easily done IF THE SPECIFICATIONS and PLANS of the device and power supply were included in the paper. Had they been available, it would appear to be a simple machine shop task to make the bits.
I have a better idea. You are so impressed, go buy one, become a distributor, and become wealthy as an example to us filthy skeptics.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
It would seem reasonable that ultrasonic impulses in a fluid column would cause the fuel to pulse as it leaves the injector as a mist and result in smaller dropplets. It also should be easy to test if what seems reasonable, actually occurs in reality.
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...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Didn't Mythbusters bust this one last year?
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:5, Informative)
"A finer mist *does* improve fuel economy."
Automakers could easily run a high-pressure second stage fuel pump/lines/injectors for finer atomization.
Designers are working on direct injection gasoline engines to blast the fuel into the combustion chamber, "diesel style", for even better combustion control than the common injector location upstream of the intake valve.
These retrofit with a cylinder head redesign, and are proven on ultralight aircraft engines among others:
http://www.orbeng.com.au/orbital/directinjection/dioverview.htm [orbeng.com.au]
Re: (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.
Re:This is... (Score:5, Funny)
Really? Where?!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Exactly! I've seen bad maintenance double up the consumption ... More precisely on my own car ... When the piston rings failed, and i had been knowing the day is coming when things fail ...
On old carburated cars aswell, their tuning is very important, but no one ever tunes them after they come out of the factory, therefore, overtime consumption increases as the cylinders gets looser, and crap piles up in the intake parts etc.
One often forgotten thing for fuel consumption is tire pressure, and width aswell.
Re:This is... (Score:4, Interesting)
One often forgotten thing for fuel consumption is tire pressure, and width aswell. The rolling drag is way higher with wider tires, and with lower pressures.
On my last trip to the USA I was amazed by how many cars drove past me with tires so flat that you could hear the difference in the road contact as they went past (not to mention the engines with audibly bad timings). For a nation so obsessed with cars, you don't seem to spend much effort maintaining them.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is... (Score:5, Funny)
When my printer manufacturer manages to provide automatic nozzle cleaning, I would think that car manufacturers would be able to do the same.
Re:This is... (Score:4, Informative)
My mechanic doesn't recommend injector cleaning treatements. He says they are no longer needed, and as a partial proof he tells me that the outfits selling the treatments talk about incremental profit, add-on sales, and 'even your tire-changer could perform this service'. And he says his tire-changer is smarter than some of his ASE-certified techs, cause tires aren't as simple as you think. No discussion of the car makers endorsing these treatments. And 2) the car makers either don't endorse these treatments.
He describes these treatments as profit centers only. I've never had an injector problem in a car, though, so I have no reason to use them either.
ps- What is 'cheap gas'? Are there fly-by-night refineries out there producing inferior gas? Which ones? What brands or stores do we avoid?
whatever.
Re:This is... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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:Blind testing needed (Score:5, Informative)
Or they could oh I don't know, attach the wheel of the car to some kind of sensitive machine which would measure the power output of the engine under controlled and reproducible load, I think I will call this device a dynamometer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamometer
RTFA before you call something snake oil, the tests were done with laboratory measurements not with human drivers.
Re:Blind testing needed (Score:5, Informative)
http://pubs.acs.org/about.html [acs.org]
This is the site for the publisher. So, since it's HAS been peer reviewed and published in a respectable journal, by your standards it's not snake oil but solid science. Go ahead and try to reproduce the results - that's why he published the paper.
Electrorheology is NEW. He doesn't charge the fluid, he used an electric field to reduce the viscosity.
Did you RTFA?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
my pal and myself have tried a lot of different things to improve our gas usage.
any you are correct, knowledge of the product installed changes your driving behavior.
I was tested with a few blind studies and only 1 product seemed to help the others
were found to be snake oil. and the one product that did help, we learned that we
could port and polish the intake manifold to reproduce the improvement.
Blind studies were my friend would install or not install without telling me and
I would do the same to him. and
Re:Blind testing needed (Score:5, Informative)
The proper blind testing of course would be to install it in say ten cars, seven or eight where it actually works, and the other ones an identically looking device that is simply not functional.
Then either choose ten identical cars (as identical as possible), or first follow the drivers for say a month or two and record their fuel use without the device, and after that for some period of time with the device (or the placebo) installed, and check the differences.
It sounds bull to me that you can so easily change the viscosity of an apolar fluid with electricity. Most of the molecules in gasoline are nonpolar, and not even polarisable, so I doubt an electrical field has much influence if any at all on such a liquid.
Re:Blind testing needed (Score:5, Funny)
Well, I really don't think we should let blind people drive. Anyway, I am pretty sure it is illegal in every state, except New Jersey.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
plenty of european and japanese cars already feature such a device.
Re:Easy way to massively improve fuel consumption (Score:4, Interesting)
>> I disagree. Those that drive like hell or drive gas guzzlers know full well their gas consumption habits.
Sure, people that drive aggressively on purpose will probably know that it uses more gas, but the vast majority of people drive "normally" and yet could easily improve their gas mileage by 10-30% by changing their driving style (coasting in gear, constant consumption hills, driving the speed limit, etc).
I recently rented a Camry hybrid for a road trip. 1100 km, mostly highway driving. For the first part, I drove normally,without paying attention to the fuel consumption and used about 6.8 L/100km.
Then I started paying attention and adjusting my driving style. By the end I'd brought my average down to 5.5L/100km, and over one 250km stretch where I was really paying attention, I used 5.2L/100km.
This car is rated at 34MPG (6.9L/100km) (highway) by the EPA 2008 measurements, and 38MPG by the 2007 standards. My normal driving was close to the 2008 measurements, and I was able to improve that by about 19%, and beat both official estimates of fuel mileage (42-45MPG).
Re: (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:Blind testing needed (Score:5, Informative)
For god's sake, I know this is Slashdot, and it's the cliche that nobody RTFA's. But I can't believe this prolonged discussion about how testing his device in a Mercedes was improper because he probably just changed his driving habits, and how they should install these in dozens of cars with placebos in a randomized, blind, controlled study, and then finally to your brilliant deduction here that they should just hire an independent lab to run it on a bench test as a properly controlled lab experiment. BECAUSE THAT"S EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID. Way to go, slashdot writers, your prolonged discussion on how they did everything wrong, and subsequently figuring what it is that they should have done, has finally arrived at the right answer for what they really should have done- the sort of testing they ACTUALLY DID PERFORM. From TFA:
The first engine test was conducted by Cornaglia Iveco, a diesel engine manufacturer in Italy (Figure 6a). The tests measured the fuel consumption rate and the power output at a constant rpm.
Constant RPM = lab work, not car driving. Read their testing methodology- a diesel engine on a lab bench hooked up to a dynamometer, measuring power vs. fuel consumption on the same motor with and without the device, performed by an independent testing lab.
On the Mercedes, they started with the car parked on a dynamometer in the lab and did lab testing, then they did six months of road testing to make sure their lab results were applicable in a real-world environment.
There are lots of highly-moderated posts above about how kooks and con-artists have been selling scam fuel-economy improvement devices for years, and how stupid the Slashdot editors are to have approved this story. Their argument boils down to saying that, because anyone has ever done anything invalid in the realm of engine efficiency, therefore any conceivable improvements in engine efficiency add-ons that anyone comes up with are invalid. This is a physics professor at a real university who published a peer-reviewed scientific paper in a respectable scientific journal, including results from an independent lab, and complete with specifications and testing methodology, because he expects other labs to duplicate and confirm his research. It's called snake-oil above, but that's the snake-oil he's selling that's being promoted by this? He's not selling anything yet, he's performing research and testing. He applied for a patent because he hopes to profit eventually. Once it's fully confirmed and proven.
Re:This is... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, except this one has a paper published, and lab tests on the fuel injector mist as well as a dynanometer and other tests.
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html [acs.org]
Seems like you threw the baby out with the bathwater.
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 si
Re:This...could be the real deal-RTFA (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (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 bu
Re:This is... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed! As a former mechanic, I can immediately call "Bullshit!"©.
At the station, we had a box in the back full of magnets, coil ballasts, additives, mothballs, and some strange gizmo even I couldn't figure out what they were trying to do. All crap. They were either pulled from customers' cars (to make them work again) or given to us to put on cars by sales drones.
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).
So, let's look at the fuel situation, shall we? Let's shall!
Fuel gets pumped up to the fuel rail(s), and into the injector(s), where it gets sprayed into the combustion chamber(s). {Note: The plurals take into account whether you've got TBI or MPFI.} You apparently attach this thing BEFORE it gets to the injector. Let that sink in for a moment - BEFORE the injector. Sure, the molecules are having their neutron polarity reversed (or whatever the hell they're claiming), but those molecules are now going to get crammed back together in the small amount of time it's waiting for the computer to tell the injector to fire. An eight cylinder engine has a longer time between firings than a four-banger, but compensating for amount of fuel capacity between the device and the injector, speed of engine, and amount of fuel being metered, this may be as long a a second or two. Remember the LA riots? The police would break up the crowd, only to have them reorganize somewhere else. Exact same effect. You're doing your thing before the injector, but after the processed fuel gets another block down the street, it's back to being an angry mob. And heaven help you if the car is Korean.
Now, if this device were to be incorporated into the injector's NOZZLE, they may have something. Or, maybe, just have the refineries put a big one on the output valve of their pipeline so we won't need to put small ones on each injector in every car on the planet.
banzai
Bullshit!© is a copyrighted title of Showtime! Networks.
Tornado® just sucks balls.
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: (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 propertie
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'll believe it when I see Billie Mays selling it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"NOTE: Copies of this study are available to working journalists and may be obtained by contacting Preston M. Moretz in Temple University's Office of News Communications at 215-204-4380 or pmoretz@temple.edu."
Why isn't the study available as a download? If it's true, there are plenty of skilled fabricators who can whip up a test mule and validate the assertions.
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 :)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Fuel standards in Europe are higher than for the USA though (higher RON fuel).
You understand in the states our petrol octane number is measured based on RON+MON/2, as in an average of two standards.
87 octane US is like 91 or 92 RON.
Now you could be an insider telling us that Euro fuel is actually more refined, and American petrol uses a ton of additives to compensate for a less refined product. I have no clue if this is true or not, but if you're just going by the numbers, our numbers are lower.
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: (Score:2)
Probably true for all domestic model cars, but I think some Japanese imports are meant to be 98 RON only (or whatever the higher standard is). If you know your car is going to only be run on super you can have it tuned accordingly to get more power.
In America [wikipedia.org] it's the 'premium' stuff that is 95 RON, whereas here that's the minumum! I'm guessing that in Japan they only run 98 RON or higher, can't find much info on that though.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
My wife's Merc (Ok, it's a Smart for 4) regularly gets over 50 to the gallon (petrol)
Diesel cars here (UK) can get over 60 to the gallon.
Why is 38 in a diesel considered special?
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. My 1987 Citroen CX 25DTR, which was basically powered by a 1970s diesel truck engine, could easily achieve 40mpg - more, if I increased the boost pressure and fuelling rate.
38mpg is lame, for a modern diesel. 32mpg is an engine fire.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The absolute value isn't important. It's considered special because exactly the same vehicle with exactly the same engine was only doing 32mpg without this device.
Re: (Score:2)
Psst, no it isn't. Google says:
1 US gallon = 0.83267384 Imperial gallons
Re: (Score:2)
Part of it is that safety and emissions requirements are more stringent in the USA, so there are a lot of modifications that need to be made in order to sell the cars here. For example (if I recall correctly) the US version of the new Lotus Elise weighs something like 50-100lbs more than the Euro version because of the safety equipment they had to throw in.
That said, yes, it's stupid that a lot of the European cars aren't Stateside. In addition to being more efficient, they're so much better looking than
Re: (Score:2)
They're not available in the US because you guys don't like small cars. Plus you're not paying $2.50 per litre like we do here (in Netherlands).
busted. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh come on please stop it. This has been busted [wikipedia.org].
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 abil
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Fuel Efficiency of Honda (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Fuel Efficiency of Honda (Score:5, Insightful)
Two years ago it was magnets... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Amazing. (Score:2)
Quote from the paper referenced in the Slashdot story: "Using the mismatch in the dielectric constant or magnetic permeability between the suspended particles and the base liquid, we can apply an electric or magnetic field to aggregate the small particles into large ones."
What? The "magnetic permeability" [wikipedia.org] of a non-magnetic substance?
Re: (Score:2)
Wait... if you "aggregate small particles into large ones", wouldn't that make the fluid more viscous, not less?
Yes. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Easier way , without the snake-oil... (Score:2)
I suspect unless the tests done with this gadget were blind tests on unsuspecting users, the test-effect where the driver knows at some level that they are meant to be driving efficiently is largely responsible.
The gains seen could easily have been created just through good drivi
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect unless the tests done with this gadget were blind tests on unsuspecting users, the test-effect where the driver knows at some level that they are meant to be driving efficiently is largely responsible.
We could tell everybody their fuel economy is being tested. Maybe that will reduce consumption. A rental car I drove recently had a display for the distance remaining on the current tank of fuel, based on quantity remaining and current rate of consumption. I found that it encouraged me to find ways to push the number up.
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?
I've got one. (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Awesome, doing it myself right now (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awesome, doing it myself right now (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Have you considered reading the article?
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/enfuem/asap/abs/ef8004898.html [acs.org]
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.
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.
Droplet size? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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).
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%.
The Best way (Score:3, Informative)
What *I* heard... (Score:4, Funny)
With thanks and apologies to Cory Doctorow . . . (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Some weird numbers in their data (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Typical slashdot vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:4, Funny)
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!
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:5, Informative)
>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.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
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.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Geo Metro (Score:2)
the 1990 Geo Metro XFI got 44/53 mpg city/hwy.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re: (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: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.
Re:Next stop, infomercial and/or MLM (Score:5, Funny)
[...]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.
Re: (Score:2)
"insensive purposes"? what does that mean? Did you mean to say "intents and purposes"? Or have a just fallen for a well-crafted troll?
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent, I managed to inject a typo into my own pedantic post.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Well crafted. He uses a number of common mistakes in one sig (intensive, begs the question, who vs whom, ect (that's intentional ;) )).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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-
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 flui
This looks bona-fide (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [acs.org] 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