# Tablets for fuel
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 18, 2005, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334 "2005-01-18T08:28:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/21 "2005-01-19T09:08:29Z")
If you are for real, which in all honesty I am starting to doubt, you’re setting yourself up to be unceremonously parted from your cash. Seriously.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/22 "2005-01-19T11:05:48Z")
“Every Idea needs money and I have got that”
Nigerian scam. Send me your idea, and your bank account number, so that I can pay you.
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### Author:  [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/23 "2005-01-19T11:56:15Z")
> [@ramesh sodum](#):
>
> 1. Under correct pressures and Tempratures iam sure it could be done and imagine if 20Ltrs of Gasoline is compressed into just 1 small tablet to carried in your pocket.
Let me see:
The density of gasoline is about 730 kg per cubic metre. ([Cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density))
20 litres of gasoline is 0.02 cubic metres, and therefore has a mass of 730 x 0.02 = 14.6kg, or slightly more than 32lb. I hope your trousers are reinforced.
Now, would you be interested in my new low-density colubrine lipid product? 😉
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/24 "2005-01-19T12:46:50Z")
I am looking for someone who has invented reinforced trousers and wish to make him my partner; together we rule the world by producing trousers with pockets strong enough to carry tablets of compressed or dehydrated gasoline.
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### Author:  [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/25 "2005-01-19T13:31:09Z")
> [@ramesh sodum](#):
>
> The purpose is :
>
> 1. What if Gasoline used in cars be converted to Tablets and they dissolve to become liquid again. Dont you think that Petrol stations would be gone.
>
> 2. Under correct pressures and Tempratures iam sure it could be done and imagine if 20Ltrs of Gasoline is compressed into just 1 small tablet to carried in your pocket.
Seriously, to answer your question:
1. No, I don’t think that Petrol stations would be gone. You’d still have to purchase your tablet fuel somewhere.
2. It’s _possible_ that under correct pressures and temperatures 20 liters of gasoline could be compressed into just one small tablet. However, a) those pressures would be simply enormous, to an extent that I doubt they could be applied in the lab; b) even if you _could_ apply that kind of pressure, it wouldn’t _permanently_ compress the gasoline; and c) you can’t eliminate the _mass_ of the gasoline – your starting quantity of 20 liters of gasoline would still mass 14.6 kilos, whether it’s compressed or not. So you _can’t_ make compressed gasoline tablets.
Now, it’s likely that you could solidify gasoline in some way…but what would be the point? Your 20 liters of gasoline are now a solid chunk of the same size, probably a bit bigger. WHat’s the advantage?
And, lest you think that there’s some way of “concentrating” gasoline, let me point out that there [aren’t a lot of things](http://hypertextbook.com/physics/matter/energy-chemical/) that have a higher chemical energy density than gasoline – which is part of the reason why we use it.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/26 "2005-01-19T15:21:18Z")
**ramesh sodum** : One of the great things about The Straight Dope is that you generally get the straight dope on just about any subject you ask about.
The unfortunate thing is that long-held beliefs can be smashed to atoms. I’ve had my ass handed to me on a plate a couple of times.
The thing is, there really _are_ ‘rocket scientists’ here. **Una Persson** works with fuels all the time, for example. There are doctors, lawyers, pilots, accountants… lots of people with expertise that they are willing to share. Sometimes their answers are not what you want to hear.
‘Fuel tablets’ sound like a good idea, but the science has to be accepted. There are a lot of areas where good ideas run smack into the brick wall of reality. One example is ‘perpetual motion’. There have been ideas for unlimited energy for a long, long time. Every one of these has been proven not to work. (_Mythbusters_ did get one machine to work – sort of. It basically used solar energy, so it wasn’t really a ‘perpetual motion machine’ that made more energy than it took to run it. And it turned so slowly as to be completely useless.) Still, there are people out there who will tell you _their_ ideas really will work; and damn the science!
So don’t get discouraged about asking questions here. That’s what the boards are for. But do listen to the people who have the training and experience when they answer.
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### Author:  [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/27 "2005-01-19T15:30:22Z")
> [@Mangetout](#):
>
> If you are for real, which in all honesty I am starting to doubt, you’re setting yourself up to be unceremonously parted from your cash. Seriously.
You’re much kinder than I am: “A fool and his money are here, asking to be parted.”
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### Author:  [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/28 "2005-01-19T16:33:09Z")
> [@ramesh sodum](#):
>
> Financial advisors can only give you returns of max 10-12% in USD terms. Venture capitalism can give you 30-50% returns on your investment.
Except most lose most or all of their investment.
> [@](#):
>
> By the way in Russia i have known someone who could make fuel tablets of Gasoline but Russia??? it is very difficult to get the Technology and besides the Guy i knew died or murdered??
Um, right. There is a well known scam involving tablets, water, and a fake gas tank that was commonly used in the US in the 1930’s to con people out of their money. If anyone demonstrated these “fuel tablets” that reconstituted as gasoline, I can assure you it was a similar scam. These things do not exist, no matter how much you want them to.
The Master speaks: [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_399.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_399.html)
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### Author:  [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/29 "2005-01-19T17:02:35Z")
One more time.
You seem to be under the impression that gasoline is mostly water, with some sort of other stuff disolved in it. There are lots of liquids that really are composed this way. Milk for instance. Milk is mostly water, with disolved sugar, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. So you can take out the water and make powdered milk. You could compress the milk powder into tablets if you wanted, but usually it isn’t formed that way because loose powder is easier to dissolve. So you really could add a milk tablet to a bucket of water and make reconstituted milk and people really do this all the time.
But unfortunately, gasoline doesn’t contain any water. That’s right. Even though gasoline is a liquid, there is no water in it. So you can’t remove the water from gasoline and be left with a compressed residue.
Think about this. A wax candle is solid, right? There’s no water in it, you can’t dehydrate a candle to make a candle tablet that can be mixed with water. But if you raise the temperature of the wax, the wax melts. It isn’t turned into water, it isn’t incorporating water, it is simply melting. If you wanted to make a compressed tablet out of the melted wax the only thing you could do is cool it off. But the solid wax wouldn’t be any smaller than the liquid wax, although it would be more convenient to store and transport.
Gasoline is similar to that melted wax, except that gasoline “melts” at a much lower temperature. Gasoline only solidifies at extremely cold temperatures. So it would be possible to freeze the gasoline into solid bricks, but it would be very inconvenient to store and transport because you’d need special refrigeration equipment to keep it solid. And the solid chunks of gasoline wouldn’t be any lighter or smaller than the liquid gasoline.
Also, consinder this. Gasoline (and wax) burn because the hydrogen and carbon atoms in them combine with the oxygen in the air, releasing energy. But water is composed of hydrogen already combined with oxygen. You can’t burn water, meaning you can’t combine water with oxygen to release energy, because water is already combined with oxygen. So any addition of water to any fuel is useless, because that water will be chemically inert.
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### Author:  [@Rick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/30 "2005-01-19T22:15:50Z")
But wait there is one more hurdle to overcome:
Even if you could make a solid gas tablet that would run a car (which you can’t)
You are faced with the problem of who are you going to sell it to?
Existing cars are not set up for solid fuel, and not set up for reconverting solid fuel tablets into a liquid.
So no cars that use this magic tablet, no market no sale. No market, no need for a magic tablet.
That’s some catch that catch 22
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### Author:  [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)
#### Post date: [January 19, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/31 "2005-01-19T22:53:55Z")
> [@Rick](#):
>
> But wait there is one more hurdle to overcome:
> Even if you could make a solid gas tablet that would run a car (which you can’t)
> You are faced with the problem of who are you going to sell it to?
> Existing cars are not set up for solid fuel, and not set up for reconverting solid fuel tablets into a liquid.
> So no cars that use this magic tablet, no market no sale. No market, no need for a magic tablet.
> That’s some catch that catch 22
The way I saw the scheme working was that people would buy the tablets, then convert them at home (or carry them in the vehicle while traveling and convert when needed), then refilling the tank, not just feeding the tablets to the car.
A potential benefit would be that you could buy in bulk (presumably saving money). Most people don’t do this now since storage would be hazardous and expensive. If gasoline could safely be converted into a condensed tablet/powder type stuff (which I don’t think will be happening any time soon, no worries), the storage costs would be nil and with the ability to buy in bulk when the price was low, the current sales structure (right phrase? I don’t know) would have to change dramatically.
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### Author:  [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)
#### Post date: [January 20, 2005, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tablets-for-fuel/285334/32 "2005-01-20T00:33:07Z")
> [@ramesh sodum](#):
>
> .
>
> But the questions remain who can give ideas to me and i could make a machine that could do this and make him my partner in this venture.
**Ramesh** You are using this board for commercial solicitation of members to invest in your ideas.
**tomndebb** closed another of your threads today. I just closed this one.
The members here love to have people ask them questions that perhaps have a factual answer. But don’t solicit the members.
**samclem** GQ moderator
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