OK, I need some debunking on something new.
http://www.fuelenhancer.com/main.html
And
http://www.fuel-tec.com/faq.html (I can’t reach this page, but I saw the cache from google).
This site has started sale on something called “fueltec” that sounds like another Tornado Fuel saver gimmick.
I’m guessing it doesn’t work. How and why would a magnet affect gasoline?
So, science geeks of the SDMB, please tell me what you think!
Thanks! General google searches didn’t find anything.
Pure fiction. It is an out and out scam!
Not convinced? Part with some hard earned money, order one and open it up to find two magnets mounted on a length of stainless tubing.
The sad thing is, someone on another forum bought one…for $155 CAN.
Yeah, that’s pretty sad. I always question these sorts of things but Google didn’t immediately catch anything about it (googling fueltec gave me ads for fuel tornado and other scams!).
The magnet sounds like an obvious scam. But I have to admit the tornado thingy does sound like it could work. Anyone know of a site or link debunking it as well?
Thanks.
The tornado things have been throughly debunked.
Think about it. The air is being spun just behind your airbox. There’s still another 2-3 feet of plumbing left for the air to travel. That air is not going to be spinning any more. Another similar scam is the bolt on supercharger which is basically a small blower. You’ll need some serious fans to make that work (which is why real superchargers (or turbochargers) are expensive and belt/exhaust driven, not powered by the electrical system!)
There are plenty of sites debunking that one. The magnet thing is new to me though.
Even citations to controlled tests can be misleading, because the testing agencies (like the EPA) tend to express their conclusions in necessarily verbose statistical language, for example, the conclusion might include something like:
Use of the Magnaboostertronoscope 3001 resulted in increases in fuel economy in six of the observations, all of which were less than 1.0 %. When the fuel economy data are analyzed (using the Student’s t test) as a whole, there is no statistical difference in the fuel economy results as a function of use of the Magnaboostertronoscope 3001. When these six observations were analyzed individually, the fuel economy increase data of 0.2 miles per gallon or lower from one vehicle were significant at the 95% level of confidence.
Essentially, this conclusion says the device is worthless, but by carefully selecting our quotes, we can extract:
The EPA says: Use of the Magnaboostertronoscope 3001 resulted in increases in fuel economy… difference in the fuel economy results as a function of use of the Magnaboostertronoscope 3001. When these six observations were analyzed individually, the fuel economy increase data … were significant at the 95% level of confidence.
From that site:
WTF?
It’s utter bollocks.
What’s the nonsense about “free electons” in Hydrogen atoms? In a hydrocarbon aren’t the electrons busy keeping the Hydrogen stuck to the Carbon?
How about foot magnets
[Marvin]Depressing. Isn’t it.[/Marvin]
What about the “conditioning” of diesel fuel with magnets?
It sounds dubious to me, but there are some technical papers here .
Would the U.S. Navy waste money on something that doesn’t work? 
Magnets on your cold water pipes are also supposed to keep minerals from building up inside them!!
This is snake oil…along with those hundreds of quack formulations that grow hair on bald men’s heads!
NOTE: The paper is published by Algae-X. It is not a USN publication.
The paper makes assertions and does not provide the results of any rigorous scientific research and test results.
Having been written by a PhD means nothing by itself. Some of them are self-deluded in to believing they have invented overunity of zero point energy sources. Always looking for monetary support to conduct more research but no output power.
YES. They and other gov’t. branches have been the victims of scams. It isn’t too hard to sell some faceless staff member to buy and try out a new product in the hope of finding a magic cureall and make a name for himself!
While I was in high school, I encountered someone selling a product like this at a county fair. I read through a binder full of strange ‘scientific’ reasons why this improbable-looking device would work. I didn’t say anything, but I remember many of these same arguments being used. None of them make much sense at all.
This is a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the page at the link provided above.
Hydrogen atoms as a basic element of fuel
The author seems rather unfamiliar with the concept of atoms and molecules. Hydrocarbon fuels are made of hydrogen and carbon atoms bonded to each other in specific patterns. (The next paragraph suggests that the author thinks the hydrogen atoms are free.) The use of the terms ‘K shell’ and ‘L shell’ suggests an outdated knowledge of chemistry; these terms are still used, but it is more common to refer to ‘energy levels’.
Hydrogen atoms and ‘free electrons’
An electron which is not paired with another in its orbital is generally known as an ‘unpaired’ electron, not a ‘free’ electron. In a hydrocarbon, hydrogen atoms are invariably bonded to carbon. Each hydrogen atom ‘shares’ its electron with a carbon atom, and the carbon atom in turn ‘shares’ one of its electrons with a carbon atom. This is known in basic chemistry as a ‘covalent bond’.
Increasing the energy of a free electron, making chemical reasons more efficient
It’s possible to make an electron in a molecule transfer from one energy level to a higher energy level, which is called ‘exciting’ it. This requires a specific amount of energy. For most of these possible transitions, the energy required is in the ultraviolet range, though some electrons can be excited by visible light. Various things can happen when an electron is excited; most involve the emission of light. Sometimes a bond can be broken to form a different molecule, or an electron can be removed from the molecule, forming a reactive ‘free radical’. Radicals are important in combustion, and there are legitimate ways of improving the efficiency of an engine by introducing radicals. (Tetraethyllead in leaded gasoline is a source of radicals.) However, you can’t make radicals with a magnet.
The analogy with photosynthesis
This is an entirely incorrect analogy. It’s true that photosynthesis involves the promotion of electrons in atoms by light. Specific wavelengths of light are required for this. Light, not permanent magnets.
Boosting the efficiency of the fuel
A magnet is not an effective energy source. It certainly does not provide energy of the wavelength required to do what it claims, to promote electrons in hydrogen atoms to higher energy levels. Also, modern engines burn most of their fuel (once the engine has warmed up) completely to carbon dioxide. There isn’t much room to increase fuel efficiency by encouraging more complete combustion. It’s true that adding radicals to the fuel mixture will improve the engine’s performance, but radicals aren’t formed by magnets. Even if it did, radicals are highly reactive and most are short-lived. It’s doubtful that free radicals formed in the fuel line would last long enough to affect combustion in the engine.
More efficient combustion
I don’t really know enough about engines to handle each claim made in this section. First, magnets won’t form radicals. Second, the amount of chemical energy available in the fuel is fixed and can’t be increased provided that all the fuel is burned in the engine. A modern, well-tuned engine should burn all the fuel it receives, and should produce very little CO. It’s possible that adding radicals to the fuel might make the engine slightly more efficient by making more of the fuel combust completely to CO[sub]2[/sub], but there are more practical ways of doing this. Also, providing the engine with a fuel that is different than the fuel it was designed for might make the engine less efficient. Different types of engines have different types of combustion. Gasoline and diesel engines, for example, work differently, and a modification to the fuel that makes a gasoline engine work better may well make a diesel engine perform more poorly.
Crystal structure of carbon
This seems to be a way of accounting for how the device affects the other ‘basic element of fuel’, carbon. It seems to neglect the fact that carbon and hydrogen atoms in fuels are bonded to each other. Fuels are not mixtures of hydrogen and carbon atoms. Also, fuels are liquids, and do not have a crystal structure. Heat and pressure will change the ‘crystallization’ of pure, solid carbon. But a magnet cannot possibly change the crystal structure of a fuel, because it does not have one.
van der Waals forces
The statement that “hydrogen forms cage-like structures which … form pseudo-compounds [when combined with carbon]” may explain much of the faulty reasoning here. The author seems to believe that fuels are a loose association between hydrogen atoms (presumably in ‘cage-like structures’) and carbon atoms. This is, at best, an obsolete understanding of structure in organic molecules. The sidebar seems to provide a second explanation of the device. I’m not sure whether it’s supposed to be an explanation of how the ‘free electrons’ are promoted, or if it’s trying to say that the device makes oxygen bind with fuel better, or that it aligns the fuel in a certain magical way. In reality, van der Waals forces are weak attractions between temporary electric charges (induced dipoles). They are not, AFAIK, affected by magnetic fields. (I’m basing this on the fact that van der Waals-related parameters are not substantially modified in NMR spectroscopy, which involves a magnetic field far stronger than an ordinary permanent magnet.)
So, I do not think this device can work in the manner that it claims. I can’t explain the test results, however. (Note that this does not mean that the test results are necessarily valid, or can’t be explained. Perhaps the engines were tuned up, or some other parameter was changed that made the engines perform differently.)
Hey! That’s not true! Electric turbos do really work. The only downside is that you can operate it only for 15 seconds or so, because any longer and it will drain the battery completely. So it is only good for a single overtake, but it definitely works.