Acetone in Gas tank?
 

What do you guys make of this? I don't know anything about anythnig so I figure somone can call fact or fiction on this.

http://www.pureenergysystems.com/new...00069_Acetone/

Very interesting. Sounds like it would not do any harm to try. One thing I know about Acetone, it does evaporate very quickly. The amount needed is so small, either it would work, or it wouldn't, and it would do no harm to try. Hmmm, can anyone think of any gotcha's here?

Every time there's an upset in gas prices, this old myth comes out in force again.

No, it doesn't work. Plus acetone is really bad for many plastics found in your fuel system.

Good to know. I kind of figured it from the oil company's point of view. If there was a way to make their fuel more powerful, and inexpensively, they would do it, then advertise "new and improved, high performance, etc." The only additive that remotely does this is octane, which is pretty expensive, but there if you wanted in the various grades. Thanks for the reminder CAlvarez. Actually, it's the first time I ever heard it.

Weakened plastic fitting in fuel system + fuel under high pressure = leak, potentially spraying on hot engine parts = burned up car. Not a real good idea. A safer way is with a cow magnet. They don't work either but at least there is less risk! ;-)

http://www3.mnsu.edu/newsarchive/story.asp?id=205

they are talking about 0.0003 % to 0.0025 % acetone maximum -- not 100% acetone. i wonder how much damage 0.0003 % could do.

[edit: who wants to experiment? :)]

Good point, if you're going to do something pointless, at least make it the safest pointless thing! :D

I saw an ad on eBay a few weeks ago for a device that WILL improve your gas mileage, guaranteed. I looked at it, and there is no question, it will work. It was a wood block you stick under the gas pedal.

Probably not much, as that's a lower percentage than the normal impurities. Filtering the excess junk out of the gas would probably do more than the (theoretical) acetone additive. If someone told me my coffee had 0.0003% battery acid in it I wouldn't be overly concerned.

is that because it probably does? :D (mmmmmmm ... coffee)

It is a tiny fraction. It may have no effect. It may mean that at 100k miles you have weak fuel lines. Maybe you don't care, you get rid of cars before that. Maybe it takes the insulation enamel off the fuel injector coils ($$$).

The point is you just don't know. Acetone is highly volatile and reactive.

One point is that it probably can't do any harm to use it one time to see that it does nothing.

Alright well that settles that.

Acetone has been used in racing engines as an oxygenate to give more power at high rev rates - it dropped out of fashion because methanol was more effective.

At the revs that road cars do there is unlikely to be any benefit.

As Carlos points out, acetone is used as a solvent in the plastics industry, and it would be a bad idea to assume that it won't rot the fuel system. In addition, oxygenates all adsorb water, and having hot steam in a hot metal engine is a great way to rust your engine from the inside out. Which is good way to see if the owner of a 2nd hand car you're thinking of buying has been using acetone or similar.

There are people who have reported increases in mileage rates, but a quick look at the figures suggests that these people were starting off with pretty poor fuel economy to begin with. I suspect their engines were being run on poor quality fuel, poorly tuned, or being used on too many short journeys, causing carbonisation. The acetone just strips all of that out, bringing them back to normal mpgs. i.e if they stopped using acetone they would keep the performance, at least until the engine clogged up again.

There might be some benefit with cold starting in winter, but with all the potential problems with acetone, I'd stick with a blast of WD40 (if you really have to)

Race car owners are also not hugely concerned with long-term reliability. If they have to strip down the engines between races because some additive gave them a performance boost but eats the seals, so be it. Good practice for the mechanics. What's a high-performace engine good for, 6, maybe 10 races before it's worn out?

I can't imagine that the percentages of acetone being touted here will matter at all for either gas mileage or fuel system wear and tear. Many of the seals in the fuel system are buna n rubber about which this is true:
Look in the bottom list under keytones. What actually happens in time is that buna n O-rings will swell and soften slowly when exposed to acetone.

The bigger issue here is mileage testing which is really highly subjective unless done on a dynamometer under computer control. The problem is that if I'm trying to prove that my scheme works, I'll drive differently than when testing the alternative.

Isn't this the same place Napoleon's brother, Kip, bought a time machine for Uncle Rico?

"Don't try it... it doesn't work!" - Uncle Rico

I can dig it. It's just that Figure 1 is quite intriguiging (and most likely a bit deceiving in the same breathe -- I'd like to see the individual data points).

Here's a car that used acetone in it's fuel:
http://www.research-racing.de/ems04-20.htm
A friend saw the W125 race at the Monterey Historic races in 1986.
http://www.tamsoldracecarsite.net/Me...agunaSeca.html
The friend was a Mercedes mechanic who knew quite a bit of Mercedes history. He said that the racing team never left fuel in the car because it was too corrosive. The fuel system had to be drained and flushed out between races. "Corrosive, explosive, and poisonous" was his description of the fuel used in the W125. I looked around the net for other specific ingredients of the fuel but didn't find any references.

Since we're talking about energy efficiency, has anyone calculated the lost fuel efficiency due to the obesity epidemic? I'm guessing all that extra fat being carried around in vehicles of all kinds has to be costing us more than any fuel additive could save us. :eek:

What's the difference between a 120 pound soccermom and a 250 pound soccermom in a 6,000 pound SUV...

One of them is hot and the other is not?
Is that the right answer?
:)

That's what I'm wondering. Actually, the same weight difference riding in a diesel electric train should have some small effect on fuel consumption. Make that several thousand people who are 130lbs overweight riding the train twice a day, 5 days/week or millions of them driving their SUVs 15,000 miles/year and the fat has to be costing lots of extra energy. That alone has to be contributing to the higher prices, then there's the size factor, which makes many people buy SUVs simply because they can't fit into or climb out of an economy car.

One of them could be hot, the other can't. ;)

Another point of my cow magnets post is that we can expect to see a lot of gas mileage related myths, misinformation, scams, and cons coming our way.

Another example: that 100 MPG carburetor that Uncle Dave who was a tinkerer and lived in Iowa came up with in 1956. He demonstrated it to GM and they bought it and swore him to secrecy. They've been sitting on it ever since then, but the patents are running out and will revert to the family in 6 months. Unfortunately the family has fallen on hard times. A trusted friend has recommended that I contact you as an investor, blah blah blah.

More seriously, there have also been groups working on energy conservation for many years. Rocky Mountain Institute is one such group. I don't agree with all of their answers but there is a lot of food for thought on the web site.
http://www.rmi.org/

I'm willing to bet that millions of cars and trucks sitting at ill-timed or basically uncoordinated traffic lights consume more energy on a weekday than all the SUVs and sport trucks in the country. As urban sprawl overtakes us all, we encounter more and more traffic lights that are neither sensitive to traffic nor linked with the preceding and following lights along a main commuter route. Driving to/from your workplace in rush hours can often take twice as long as the same trip would in the wee hours of the morning. Almost all of that extra time is spent sitting still waiting for traffic, missing lights, sitting in toll lines, etc. Gasoline engines consume about 1/3 of the fuel idling as they do at moderate highway speeds (not true of diesels), but cities don't really participate in saving fuel by doing something serious about traffic control.

BTW: I'm not trying to pirate this thread, I'm just putting a perspective on it.

No doubt there are lots of simple things people could do to conserve energy. I brought up the obesity angle because it seems to me that looking for a magic fuel additive is like looking for a magic diet pill. Neither will work. Americans need to suck it up and make smart, hard choices in both areas.

Not to go too far on a tangent here, but it's basically all about human psychology. Looking for the easiest answer to a problem, rather than an effective one that requires work.

I'm an avid motorcyclist and often hear the question, "What can I do to make my bike faster?" The true and correct answer is to go take a race track riding course, and go practice, because a skillful rider on a moped will smoke a numbskull on a superbike. That's not what they want to hear; they're looking for magic parts to add horsepower, which is already far more than needed.

Americans need to suck it up and make smart, hard choices in both areas.

No arm-twisting is required as the price of fuel goes up. We're already seeing a decline in the sales of SUVs and a rise in the sale of hybrids.

A friend tells me that sales of large power boats have died as well. Another friend used to fill his boat's tanks for $350. Now, at least in Canada, that'd cost him nearly $1000. Yet another has a bus-sized RV with a V-10 gasoline engine in it and took his family of four on a 2500-mile vacation trip two months ago. Cost him $2000 (Cdn) for gas.

The real killer is that the cost of absolutely everything rises with fuel prices. Everything is moved in trucks; even the fuel itself.

I don't know about that. People may be begining to conserve, but it's too little and probably too late. I just got home from a mere twenty mile trip, and during almost all of the driving I couldn't see very far in front of me because of all the SUVs. I can't wait to see $5.00/gallon. If people are going to waste fuel, it should cost them.

I'm all for $5 fuel. Hopefully it will cut down on the number of people in my way as I pilot my diesel-guzzling full-size truck to work. Either way, a few bucks really isn't changing my lifestyle. The difference really isn't that much.

That's why this country is in the position it's in now. Too many people think that because they can afford it, it's ok to waste it. They don't take into consideration the law of supply and demand. Nothing we do can significantly increase supply, but demand is dramatically affected by the number of miles per gallon the average vehicle burns. Limited supply and unreasonably high demand equals high prices. I just don't understand why so many people can't see that.

To answer that question would require an answer that includes the politics involved in what we teach kids in school, and what media reports as economics facts. IE, it would kill the thread.

I understand the relationship, and I'm willing to pay the higher price to get what I want. PowerBooks cost more and are in shorter supply than Dells, but which do I own?

Guys, people don't naturally consider global consequences when they act, and I'll agree that's short-sighted. What they do pay attention to is what they can afford. Until recently, the price of petro was affordable to SUV owners, and SUVs were rather reasonably priced. As the price of petro goes up, less people will buy them. Even so, as Carlos notes, some people will still pay a higher price for fuel and SUVs to suit their tastes, and if they can afford it, so be it. That's the way it works out here in the USA, and most everywhere else that has a free market system.

Except for Europe, Asia, Africa, South America...
The US is the only place where half of all vehicles sold have been SUVs. I guess when you're as big as a house you feel a need to drive around in your living room.

cwtnospam, did you happen to note the point I made about the connection between the price of fuel and SUV sales? That would certainly be a detriment in Europse. People here also have more income than in Asia, African and South America.

If you're going to clip a sentence from one of my posts and react to it, at least take into consideration other points made . . . unless you're just trying to say something nasty about the U.S. :rolleyes:

- counting down to thread closure . . .

I'm trying to say that we cannot afford to continue based on the assumption that because we as Americans do something, it is automatically good, or good for us. There are a great many things that we can do, most of which we shouldn't.

We need to wake up to the reality that we can't drill our way out of the mess we're in, nor can we pull a magic pill or additive out of a hat. The "free" market can't help with this either, since the suppliers have no financial incentive to develop a replacement for something that works very well for them.

There is the free market theory that price will always correct for availability (or lack thereof). Therefore, if we actually did see that there is a finite amount of oil (so far there is only a theoretical limit, but we always find far more), then the price goes up to control usage.

Is there a problem with gold consumption? It's a self-correcting problem.

It is popular to blame people for "gross consumption" because they drive an SUV. I'll give you that most people don't NEED one. I don't NEED a full size truck all the time, but when I do, I do. Should I rent? That's not a good solution for me, so I bought one. I traded a guzzler for the one that gets the best fuel mileage possible in a truck, and I run renewable bio-based fuel in it.

One could argue the economic principles of capitalism apply here; those who want to earn nice things and want to be able to afford a big vehicle will work harder for it. That drives our economy and productivity. Note that all the largest vehicles are made by US companies, keeping some of the money in our economy. You could argue that buying small foreign cars is depleting our economy.

Not to argue the politics though! I'm just making the point that it's not just as simple as blaming people for gross consumption. That applies to some, but not to everyone, and there might be another side to it.

The past is an important influence on people's behavior. Up until around 1950 the US was a net exporter of oil. To a degree that abundance made the Packards, Duesenbergs, and Cords of the 1920s and 1930s possible. I'd say that people's perceptions of gas as abundant continued most of the way through the 1960s. As a society we didn't start to react to the fact that we use more oil than we produce until around 1970.

Gold isn't consumed. Even if you eat it, it will not be used up. Since people don't need it in their daily lives, it would be easy to correct any problems on the production side by simply not buying it. We can't do that with oil.

And for good reason. If you're getting less than 15mpg on average (not just highway) as most SUVs do, you're using more than twice as much gas as you would in a car getting over 30mpg. Since many people are complaining about the price of gas, and somewhere around half of them drive these gas guzzlers, I find the hypocrisy a bit much.

This would be true, except there are no US companies making cars. They're all multinational and many of the parts in so-called American cars don't get produced here. The flip side is that many Hondas and Toyotas for example are produced here, including many of their parts.

Maybe not, but it's a great place to start. Gross consumption doesn't just hurt us at the pumps. It hurts us politically around the world and that in turn hurts us militarily.

It seems there are already other energy alternatives in the wings . . . like ethanol, for example. There we even have a sustainable resource with a huge payoff to agri-business. See this link for an indication of just how much ethanol is produced in Kansas alone. Then there are methane hydrates, which are currently difficult to retrieve, but when the need arises, it's there -- for hundreds of years. I know it's not exactly PC, but there are also untapped oil fields in the Arctic. In the years ahead, I believe we'll see huge advances in solar energy technology, with solar panels helping to provide electricity for hybrid vehicles. Then there's also hydrogen fuel cells, which might not be that far off. All of these alternatives can work in current auto engine designs.

The earth's energy future doesn't seem too bleak, when you get right down to it. Maybe we won't have to use acetone after all. ;)

A 250 pound soccer mom could be hot... if she was about 8 feet tall. And then she might have a legitimate excuse for needing that huge vehicle.

The problem is that all the alternatives to oil that you've mentioned have been around for a long time, but haven't been developed. Fuel cells for example, were used on the Appollo missions over thirty years ago! While the politicians and oil producers are partly to blame, in the end it comes down to the consumer. Products follow demand, not the reverse. Deliberately increasing demand for oil/gas is short sighted and counter productive, but that's what you do when you choose to drive around in a 5,000 pound gas guzzling road hog.

This thread has taken a few turns since I last looked!

I bet this explains everything. I confess I got my percentage proportion off the metric graph, which I now see has an error, on that website. I suppose 0.25% still isn't a lot ... but not quite a teaspoon-full either.

I should also point out that due to poor recollection, I have blended two memories in my head together with respect to my first post. While it is correct that acetone has been used in large proportions to improve peak power performance in racing engines, there was also research that showed its value as a miscible agent in fuel that had an alcohol oxygenate (or extender if you would prefer.)

Extenders are used in road cars to improve the knock performance of fuels (and slightly improve peak power.) Heavily water contaminated gasoline tends to have a water layer, which leaches the alcohol extender from the fuel, because alcohols dissolve more readily in water than in gasoline.

i.e it can be used as a mixing agent to 'recombine' the alcohol and gasoline in water contaminated fuel. R.Stone doesn't say what proportion is needed to achieve the result (* see below.) but the maximum permissible percentage of methanol is UK fuels is 3%, so it would probably be less than this value. So if an objective test showed that people could get a benefit from acetone (and I'm not convinced it would be in improved mpgs) they might get even better performance by finding out why their fuel contains so much water, and doing something about it. That water won't be helping their engine.

* but I think he is referencing a paper "Vehicle performance of gasoline containing oxygenates" by F.H.Palmer (1986) - full reference on request.

cwtnospam, did you take a look at how much ethanol is already being produced just in Kansas, and how many more plants are in the works. I don't see how you can say this alternative isn't being developed.

Also: Products follow demand, not the reverse. Deliberately increasing demand for oil/gas is short sighted and counter productive, but that's what you do when you choose to drive around in a 5,000 pound gas guzzling road hog.

Geez, this is the second post from you on this thread that is a borderline troll. . . unless you just plain old don't understand the connections between supply, demand and price. As long as oil is plentiful and cheap, automobiles will run on gasoline (or diesel). When/if other energy sources could be used for a competitive price, they'd catch on. It really is just that simple, and isn't especially unique to Americans. If gasoline cost a dollar a gallon in Europe, there'd be more people driving "guzzling road hogs."

Acetone will cost you more in the long term than what it will save in fuel costs. New fuel pump and fuel lines, let alone the rest

There's the secondary issue of the roads. While we enjoy large, easy to navigate roads in nearly all parts of the country, most of Europe is full of tiny roads where an R5 is a handful. Add the third issue of an effective 80% tax rate in England and other parts of Europe. With all that, people nearly have to drive small cars.

I did not say that it isn't being developed. I said that it hasn't been developed. We've had over thirty years notice that oil/gas would be a problem. The fact that these things are just now being developed is more than just disgraceful. It's also a major threat to our national security that's compounded by our insistence on finding new ways to waste fuel.

Yes, and how would you feel about Americans if you were one of them, knowing that the more fuel the Americans used, the less available and therefore the higher the price for you? This is why it hurts us politically throughout the world.

I don't follow, cwtnospam. Europeans are heavily taxed for their fuel but are angry at Americans for driving SUVs? The problem with gas prices in Europe isn't supply related, but tax-related.

Whatever . . . rejoice. Totally predictable.

Maybe you think they don't like us because they're unreasonable? They're angry at Americans for our conspicuous consumption. We appear to them the same way their Royalty did feasting while the peasants went hungry. When they see a fat American lumbering down the road in his Expedition, he might as well be saying "let them eat cake."

Reduces SUV sales are welcome, but that doesn't undo the damage. We need to make serious efforts at conservation while cutting out tax breaks for gas guzzlers and creating them for energy efficient means of transportation. Let's stop looking for magic pills.

Maybe you think they don't like us because they're unreasonable?

Jealous? ;)

Conscience, yes – jealous, no!
 

I think cwtnospam has a point about the prevalent view.

Even here in Norway, which is hardly anti-American, there is an engrained image of wasteful, arrogant yankees. That is not all caused by Texan policies, but the personal gas-guzzling choices astonishingly many Americans appear to be making. (Trust me, Phil, there is little jealousy.) Here in Europe, private consumption is not seen as merely a "private matter". Nor should it be!

Conscience and regulation need to go hand in hand. The market forces of supply and demand are fine and well, but those forces also lead to ...

Tempting though it may be, I will refrain from more pointed political comment. But, yes, there is anger. And I share it – although deep sadness is the stronger sentiment.

With best regards,
ArcticStones

.

Ahem . . . cough cough . . .

So you guys really think it's about Americans being more narrow-minded and selfish than Europeans?

:rolleyes:

We already know what's happened in the U.S. with the price of gasoline increasing, but, now, what do you think would happen if the price of gasoline dropped to $2.00 a gallon in Europe? Would SUV usage increase? You bet it would.

So the anger is that there isn't more government regulation and taxation of fuel in the U.S.? I know that's where some of you've been going with this, but that's a pretty complicated topic and is definitely getting into hard-core political discussion, which won't happen here.

In the meantime . . .
1. Don't use acetone in your gas tank.
2. Think globally.

:D

What ArcticStone was mentionning is not facts but people's perception of Americans. Even here in Quebec (don't know about other parts of Canada as I don't have time to make global surveys :D ) the perception people have of Americans (even though they do copy anythign amenrican still) is that they over-consume everything. The big bigger than they need, more than they need, etc... But as I said its only what people see from the outside take makes people see all Americans as "I'm buying it cause I can afford it" people... Same goes for people who think all americans are obese, lasy, power hungry, etc. Its all about waht peopel want to see... And they always want to see that either the choices they make are better than the neighbors, or they always thing that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence (oposites...)

We are talking about perceptions – and about certain realities in which those perceptions are rooted.

Unfortunately, one of those realities is waste. Per capita consumption of non-renewable resources is a question of statistics, not opinion.

Is it narrow-minded and selfish to have an unreasonably high per capita consumption? Much of the world does, in fact, believe so.

Do I believe Europeans are better than Americans? Hardly!
I personally intend no such generalisations. (It’s easier and more valid to make generalisations about Norwegians.) The USA is one of the most heterogeneous nations on earth – that is one of your strengths.

;)

.

Well, fwiw, many Americans also have a few negative general perceptions of Canadians, Europeans and other groups, but it wouldn't do much good to go into some of those now, would it? :p So why bring that up here?

Is it narrow-minded and selfish to have an unreasonably high per capita consumption? Much of the world does, in fact, believe so.

O please, Arctic! :rolleyes: They'd all do exactly the same if the economic possibilities we enjoy here became available to them. Virtue, here, doesn't run very deep, I'm afraid. E.g., you and others still haven't replied to my point about whether more Europeans would drive SUVs if the price of gasoline there dropped to $2.00 a gallon. You know they would.

I'm not denying the fact of America's consumption, here, only the sanctimonious attitude about that which often comes with criticism of such . . . as though people in other countries drive small, fuel-efficient vehicles because they care about the environment, pollution, etc. I've been to a lot of those countries and have seen the pollution; there's nothing remotely close to America's environmental standards in most countries around the world.

Oil is indeed a non-renewable resource, but it's hardly an endangered one. And, as mentioned several times, there are alternatives being developed (many by U.S. R&D) that are already being used and will eventually become widespread.

Phil... Are you talking about the fact that you american guys (loll... generalisation is soo easy) think we talk sloooowww and pronouce the letter "z" differently ? :D

They might, but their governments have the good sense to tax it enough to keep the price from being that cheap and to pay for some of the damage it does. It's too bad our government can't be so responsible. Another $2/gallon in taxes and maybe we could sign the Kyoto Accords.

And no, I'm not a tree hugging environmentalist. I just believe that any industry should be required to clean up after itself. How can we require that of our children and not our business leaders?

I no genius, nor a political zealot...

But I do beilieve that per capita Americans waste more than any other group in the world... Actually, I think this has been borne out with statistics. As to the gas bit, petroleum is NOT an infinite resourse, and in light of looking towards a global future, alternate fuels will be the necessity, not the exception.

I have long marveled at our gas prices here in the US as opposed to other areas, and have had to laugh when I hear the complaints from fellow Americans... Most I hear complain have the hubris to expect the we deserve
low gas prices.

And just because "we can" doesn't make us right to do so. With great might comes great responsiblility... We have given the world a lot of ammunition to use against us....

The oil will run out someday, it is inevitable. When it does, I certainly hope I'm dead and gone... As it now, it doesn't look like the world is preparing for that day....

... Yeah, I'm nuts....:eek:

So the U. S. Senate would presumably be in on this, and would then proceed to reverse their earlier 98 - 0 vote against Kyoto? :rolleyes:


The oil will run out someday, it is inevitable. When it does, I certainly hope I'm dead and gone... As it now, it doesn't look like the world is preparing for that day...

Check out some of the links posted earlier on developments in alternative approaches.

Like I said, it's too bad our government can't be more responsible.

Or maybe they're listening to their constituents? I certainly campaigned against it, as did everyone I know.

I was just looking at some home-filling options for CNG cars with some friends who need a new car. Very interesting, these days for a couple thousand dollars you can set yourself up to use natural gas in your car with the convenience of filling up right in your own garage. There are a lot of tax breaks for it, making it nearly free in the long run.

They are, but you aren't one of them. Their constituents have money and lots of it. Unfortunately, our government is for sale, regardless of the party elected.

Right. . . . They were all bought off; no compelling arguments against it, of course. . . U.S. citizens are selfish pigs who don't care about the future of energy. . . . Blah blah. . .

Thread closed.