[J-Rod]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')ow do the gas pills work?

The gas pills have the property of modifying the fuel’s molecular structure and liberating the energy contained within.

• This is achieved by Brownian motion which consists on the molecular movement of the components of the polymeric chains contained in hydrocarbons.

Because the gas pills are a catalyst, they are capable of speeding or retarding a chemical reaction, without breaking down or changing the chemical reaction and producing a transformation which modifies the molecules. The result is the liberation of the total energy contained within.

[pup55]

Ebay

For a mere $65 per bottle ($1.30 per pill) you can find out. At $1.30 per tankful, this is the equivalent of 9 cents per gallon of gas, or at the current price, you need about 7% better mileage just to break even.

For a mere $20 you can get a little booklet about how you can join in the multi-level marketing scheme to sell and distribute these things.

One thing that kind of concerns me, frankly, is that in the MSDS it gives the specific gravity as being 1.14. That basically means that this stuff is much much more dense than gasoline (spgr about .78), and probably consists mainly of a mineral filler (dirt) of some kind which has a really excellent chance to plug up your fuel filter. Also note that this stuff originates in Mexico, out of reach of the normal US legal system, etc.

Note that I am not saying this won't work. However, we learned from the famous Acetone experiment (in the "conservation and efficiency" forum) that if tested carefully (several tankfuls of gas compared to several tankfuls of the "doped" gas) and you run the statistics, you have to have a pretty big difference to be significant, because there is quite a bit of variability due to different sources of gas, different driving conditions etc. and unless you are really meticulous about keeping track of your gas usage, you cannot really make these glowing success statements on the basis of a couple of tankfuls. That, combined with the fact that you need 7% or so to break even economically makes the whole thing kind of dubious.

However, I am willing to be a good sport and try it, so I offer the following proposition: If 10 people volunteer to deposit $6.50 each in my paypal account, I will buy a bottle of this stuff, and send each of you 5 pills each (I will be a good sport and pay for the postage myself). You then should test the pills in the following way: Run five tankfuls of normal gas, and keep track of the mileage. Then, run five tankfuls of "doped" gas, and keep track of the mileage. Then, report the results in this thread and we will do statistical analysis (t-test) to determine whether the difference is significant or not, so we can see whether or not the pills "worked", like we did for the acetone. Important note: the experiment should be completed before the first week in May, because that is the time that "summer" gas is marketed in select markets. Therefore the participants should probably be people who burn about a tankful per week. Also, the ideal candidate should be some commute-a-holic that drives pretty much the same route under the same conditions every day, and does not let the rest of the family drive their car.

Also note: I figure we should assign about half the group to use the pills first, then do the control and vice versa. Reason: if you run the pills five weeks from now, it is likely that the weather will be warmer and this might make the mileage different. So some people should run the pills first, and then some others should run the pills last.

The participants should also note whether or not they need to do any unusual maintenance i.e. replace the fuel filter when it plugs up with dirt.

Anyway, that is the proposition. Report in below if you are willing to run the test and if we can get ten volunteers, I will coordinate this, as a public service, exclusive to PO.com posters!

[J-Rod]

Interesting proposition. Since they are claiming 18-22% increase, it might be worth a try. Although I am highly skeptical, for 6.50 it might be worth just a try. The marketing scheme of course sounds sketchy, you'd think something like this would easily sell itself. However, I know that advertising is expensive, and one of the hardest things to do, even if you have a great product, is get it out to the masses without a superbowl ad. Put me down for 6.50, if we get enough people we can give it a shot. I drive a lot, when work picks back up I burn through a tank maybe 3-4 days. Right now it's pretty slow.

[Devil]

A fool and his money...

If one looks at the blurb, anyone can pick holes in it, just from the contradictions, especially in the MSDS, which is totally meaningless. Just think, a catalyst that is consumed, a harmless pill that requires goggles for handling, a water-insoluble product that needs water for cleaning up etc. etc. etc. Worse, it claims to revert polymers. The only polymers in motor fuels are the extremely small amount in additives to prevent injector clogging and pinking. If they are reverted, then it won't do the engine any good. However, it is probably a relatively harmless scam to part the gullible fool from his money.

And, if it had any value, an independent lab would have tested it by now and reported its merits or otherwise.

Slightly more technically, a tankful of fuel contains so much C and so much H. IOW, it contains so many kJ of potential energy. Even IF the pill caused a chemical reaction such as polymer reversion, there will still be only so much C and so much H or so many kJ of potential energy. NOTHING can be added. A correctly adjusted ICE will not waste any more of the available chemical energy than it has to, by leakage past the piston rings, by incomplete combustion within the cylinder etc.,and is tuned for the optimum use of the standard fuel ± its compositional tolerances. No minor fiddling of fuel composition will make a jot of difference, even if it can be shown that enzymes depolymerise alkane chains.

IOW, it's a scam

[hotsacks]

Billions and billions of dollars have been milked from ICE lovers over the years with unfounded claims for products promising improved performance.
In the face of that,automotive engineers have been able to find only two ways of increasing ICE efficiency: decrease friction;improve oxygen intake.The only fluid you can add to your engine that will build power is synthetic oil.If you have a few extra thousand bucks kicking around,you can give your block a liquid nitrogen bath.Or take it apart and have the parts balanced to a 1/10000 gram.Short of that,put the money in a tune up instead of shipping it to some guy in Mexico whose other fax line is used to send messages about cashing in on Nigerian inheritances.
-$.02 from a greasemonkey.

[basil_hayden]

Gas catalyst pills from Mexico...sounds like Beano to me!

[Edgarglick]

I did a net search on "gasoline pills" and ended up on the link to Peak Oil.
I have a friend who seems to promote some wild schemes even though he is an extremely smart fellow. So now he's one of the "pill pushers".
Since this legend fit the tgtbt (too good to be true), category I just had to see if anyone was debunking it.
So I have this small piece of info to share. Since I am still on my friend's email list, (he does send a good joke every now and then), I was able to read through one of his info bulletins on the bio pill. You must use 7 pills for a 25 gallon tank. Now I didn't know the per pill cost but if its as you state at $1.30 then we are talking about spending $9 + bucks at least for the first several tanks as you break in your revived engine.
I have to agree with your assessment about what must take place to get increased power out of an ICE. You gotta yet more stuff to combust into that same space and one part of that "stuff" has to be the oxygen to burn it. Superchargers, propane injection for Diesel, Nitrous for gasoline ICE,
cooler more dense air. I even hear there is a device now to squirt CO2 around an air dam to cool intake air! Supposedly at some point of usage the number of pills per tank should decrease. I have done some analytical
projections and I find that the number of pills needed is inversely proportioned to the amount of $65 dollar pocket change a person is willing to give up before realizing that the avergae guy or gal is not going to ever be able to set up a test environment that will prove anything.

Ah the savings of being an addicted hot rodder and advanced shade tree mechanic. And to think I really thought all those episode of Dream car garage were a possible waste.
Oh your contributors need to cough up a lot more moolah to get you r test underway..

[gg3]

Pup55, good experimental design there! Excellent illustration of scientific method.

I'll not be joining the Guinea Pigs' Club for this one, though.

[grabby]

A catalyst does nothing but decreas the energy barrier to react the reactants.

The heat offormation - heat of dissociation and the reactants entropy is the same with a catalyst.

thus, wether or wether not it is a true catalyst, the energy output will be the same.

the only good it coule do is more fully burn the fuel before it is ejected from the exhaust, and since modern engines burn 98 percent of the fuel, you can at best only burn 2 more percent, not twenty.

Thus by definition it cannot work.

plust you'll plug your fuel filter.



now you know what, if these pills do indeed plug your fuel filter, then this will save you gas, you can no longer jackrabbit start, and you can't accelerate with more than half fuel flow, so it may work this way.

you can do the same thing buy buying smaller fuel lines. you probably would save gasoline.

[kaycee]

I would like to get some feedback on another product that has been out for 9 or so years? it claims up to 19% better gas mileage while reducing pollutants 30% - 50%

The US Military is using it and City of Bejing China.
http://www.sandiegomag.com/issues/april ... ss0405.asp

http://ethos.12w.net

thanks
Brian

[kaycee]

Hasnt anyone ever heard of ETHOS FR?

The US Military is using it and the Chinese in Bejing.

Brian

[birchm]

Has anyone ever heard of spam?

Monty python sings about it and the vikings eat it.

[Graeme]

Only a decade left to avoid climate change, says thinktank

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he world has less than a decade to reverse the growth in greenhouse gas emissions if dangerous climate change is to be avoided, according to a report from a thinktank that goes further than the landmark Stern review last week.

Yesterday's report from the Institute of Public Policy Research suggests Lord Stern's analysis was too conservative and governments need to move further and faster. To minimise the risk of a 2C rise - seen as the threshold for dangerous climate change - the authors say global carbon dioxide emissions would need to peak between 2010 and 2013.

[Heineken]

To avoid climate change?? Dangerous climate change has been under way for quite some time, as mountains of evidence show. It's too late to reverse, and greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase each year no matter what the developed nations do. Billions of poor people and their coal cook fires, etc.

By the end of this century, and perhaps even sooner, you'll need a rowboat to navigate Fifth Avenue.

[rdberg1957]

We know that climate change is occurring. The point of the report is that we have 10 years to prevent catastrophic levels of change. Whether we do have the time is a debatable question, but the standard is more realistic that the previous writer assumes.

[Heineken]

The drastic shrinkage of polar and glacial ice has already been catastrophic. Australia is suffering its worst drought in history; ditto for parts of Africa. Huge swaths of the boreal forest of North America are being killed off by tree-munching beetles. There are signs of superstorms emerging, like Katrina. This list could go on and on.

No, catastrophe is happening now, not "maybe" in ten years.

[billg]

It doesn't help that the leading spokesman in the world for tackling climate change Al Gore uses colossal amounts of petroleum jetting around the world delivering his message, a message which can just as easily be delivered via website, videoconferencing, DVD etc..He's setting a deadly example for all the rest of us. Same goes for all the peak oil speakers jetting around the world delivering their message. It's this ends justify the means mentality which I'm so sick of.

What Al Gore doesn't realize is that just about everyone thinks that what they are doing is equally important. For example, the businessman who has a job which requires that he jet around the country in order to support his 3 children and their higher education.

Let's hope that intelligent people will reject Al Gore and his profligate consumption and hypocrisy. Al Gore's usefulness to society has expired. The message of global warming is now loud and clear.

The people that we need to be emulating at this point are people at ecovillages around the country, people growing their own food, using solar and wind, using bikes instead of cars, using composting toilets, eating low on the food chain, etc..

As individuals, we need to step up to the plate. Nobody is going to save us from climate change especially not Al Gore.

[gg3]

Al Gore and the new report agree: ten years. This may be optimistic, but rare is the doctor who tells his or her patient the news at its most grim. Hearing that you have a 60% chance of living is so much more cheerful than hearing that you have a 30% chance of biting the proverbial dust.

Al Gore flies on commercial airliners, and is leveraging his energy use to produce reductions in overall energy consumption far in excess of his 1/N share of an airliner. And whatever you think of his politics, he is a damn good science teacher.

Speaking of which, perhaps we should forbid all usage of transportation where the movement of bodies and goods is only a means to the end of the movement of information. Let all the jetting businesspeople teleconference, and all the commuters telecommute.

Let every class on every subject from the first grade through graduate school be taught by telly. It would be a right and proper usage of our cables and satellites with their hundreds of channels: channels for each grade, each level of capability within each grade, each major in college and seminar in graduate school. Television would then tell the vision of a literate populace that learned at its own pace without burning dinosaur juice in profligate quantities to do so. We might miss the quaint appearance of the yellow school buses, but perhaps they could be parked in technology museums within walking distance of most neighborhoods, should any senior citizens wish for the nostalgia of recalling the bouncy noisy rides of their single-digit years.

The great benefit of tele-everything, aside from giving geeks such as yours truly another economic boom for our trade skills, is that it will preside over the reduction in consumption across the board. Business that must be done with words and pictures, is far more rational than business done in person and influenced by pheremones and other body odors. For those who think that ass-sniffing behaviors are the domain of dogs best left aside by humans, I leave you only to do serious research on what the perfumes & fragrances industry has been up to. Subtract the smells and the limbic system is left without its ability to subvert the cerebral cortex. Thus, rational business.

And with it will come rational consuming, product selected via internet where the allure of shiny and new is tempered by the small size of pictures and the absence of touch as well as smell.

We will have our downsizing alright, and I will have plenty of work to do installing the means.

And for those of agricultural inclinations, the legalization of recreational marijuana will provide you with a route to assist the powerdown. Universal consumption of the pungent weed will produce a species of humans who are content to recline and stare at their oh-so-fascinating navels, rather than frenetically scrambling for substitute gratifications at the shopping mall. Once Big Tobacco has converted to become Big Bud, you will have the opportunity to join in the fun and claim with due seriouness that it is saving the planet.

Yes, we are living in most interesting times.

[Heineken]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('billg', 'I')t doesn't help that the leading spokesman in the world for tackling climate change Al Gore uses colossal amounts of petroleum jetting around the world delivering his message, a message which can just as easily be delivered via website, videoconferencing, DVD etc..He's setting a deadly example for all the rest of us. Same goes for all the peak oil speakers jetting around the world delivering their message. It's this ends justify the means mentality which I'm so sick of.

What Al Gore doesn't realize is that just about everyone thinks that what they are doing is equally important. For example, the businessman who has a job which requires that he jet around the country in order to support his 3 children and their higher education.

Let's hope that intelligent people will reject Al Gore and his profligate consumption and hypocrisy. Al Gore's usefulness to society has expired. The message of global warming is now loud and clear.

The people that we need to be emulating at this point are people at ecovillages around the country, people growing their own food, using solar and wind, using bikes instead of cars, using composting toilets, eating low on the food chain, etc..

As individuals, we need to step up to the plate. Nobody is going to save us from climate change especially not Al Gore.