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acetone miracle fuel additive

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spuffock

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I have seen claims that the addition of half a percent or so of acetone to fuel, petrol or diesel, will give a substantial improvement in mileage. I can't see how it works, myself, but I can't see how sneaking a cup of acetone into the next tankful is going to do any damage.
any comments?
 
It doesn't work

In many cases it makes things worse

In some cases it rots your pipes/pump.

You need to watch more Mythbusters ;)
 
Good ole Myth Busters.
Years and years ago I read that the power consumed in starting up a flourescent lamp was the same amount needed to keep it going for the next eight hours. The author's advice: once you start a flourescent you should just let it keep running if there was any possibility you would be using that light again that day. After that, if I needed them, I just turned on my shop lights and left them going because it was the economical and ecological thing to do.

So, the Myth Busters were checking flourescents, and a bunch of other types of lights, for this, and lo! none of then pulled so much power at start up that it made sense to leave them running when you were finished with them.

So now we know!
Now if I could just bring myself to shut off my PCs at night...
Later!
kenjj
 
Here's a simple test to see if those urban legends are true or not: If a device uses more energy under some condition, then it will operate at a higher temperature to get rid of that energy. So if your light gets hotter when you cycle it on and off then it's wasting energy. If it runs cooler then you're saving.

A fluorescent that's been off for half an hour is stone cold, no contest here.
 
but I can't see how sneaking a cup of acetone into the next tankful is going to do any damage.

I wouldn't put acetone in my gas tank...

It's a pretty decent solvent that can attack certain materials that gasoline won't. And since it's likely unclear if any such material finds itself in the fuel loop of any particular car, it would be foolish to take the chance, IMO.
 
I have seen claims that the addition of half a percent or so of acetone to fuel, petrol or diesel, will give a substantial improvement in mileage. I can't see how it works, myself, but I can't see how sneaking a cup of acetone into the next tankful is going to do any damage.
any comments?
The ratio I’ve read most is 3 fl oz of acetone for every 10 US gal of gasoline, so it’s more like a quarter of a percent.

(3 fl oz) ÷ (128 fl oz / US gal) ÷ (10 US gal) × (100%) = 0.234375%

It doesn't work

In many cases it makes things worse

In some cases it rots your pipes/pump.

You need to watch more Mythbusters ;)
I wouldn't put acetone in my gas tank...

It's a pretty decent solvent that can attack certain materials that gasoline won't. And since it's likely unclear if any such material finds itself in the fuel loop of any particular car, it would be foolish to take the chance, IMO.
And on top of that, if you spill any on the car’s body, it’ll eat the paint too.
 
I have seen claims that the addition of half a percent or so of acetone to fuel, petrol or diesel, will give a substantial improvement in mileage. I can't see how it works, myself, but I can't see how sneaking a cup of acetone into the next tankful is going to do any damage.
any comments?

The whole idea is bollocks... I tried it, and it don't work.....
 
The main problem I can think of here is that acetone can soak up water and petrol can't. This means that when acetone is added o the fuel any water vapour in the air or generated by combustion can be soaked up by the fuel and cause rust to form inside the engine.
 
The main problem I can think of here is that acetone can soak up water and petrol can't. This means that when acetone is added o the fuel any water vapour in the air or generated by combustion can be soaked up by the fuel and cause rust to form inside the engine.

Fuel systems are sealed to prevent vapors from escaping. So the acetone you add will absorb existing water in you system and allow it to be burned.

That is how gas line de-icers works. :)
 
Here's a simple test to see if those urban legends are true or not: If a device uses more energy under some condition, then it will operate at a higher temperature to get rid of that energy. So if your light gets hotter when you cycle it on and off then it's wasting energy. If it runs cooler then you're saving.

A fluorescent that's been off for half an hour is stone cold, no contest here.

I had similar thoughts but more along the lines of: hang on a minute 8 hours power used in minutes if not seconds, so recalculate the equivalent power rating for a 8 hours power in a few seconds, your saying a 20 W bulb is going to use KWs of power for a breif period impossible it would just blow up. I use my energy saving bulbs just like any other bulb. "not needed ? TURN IT OFF"
 
Yes! One crummy 20w fluorescent at 8 hours is 576,000 watt-seconds. If it tried to use that in 8 seconds it would have to pull 72,000 watts and trip a circuit breaker. Who comes up with these myths?
 
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Yes! One crummy 20w fluorescent at 8 hours is 576,000 watt-seconds. If it tried to use that in 8 seconds it would have to pull 72,000 watts and trip a circuit breaker. Who comes up with these myths?

It's not a 'myth', it's an 'exaggeration'.

A fluorescent tube does take much higher power as it starts up, and it also take a fair number of minutes until it's producing full output - but you're only talking a few minutes difference, if that.
 
It's not a 'myth', it's an 'exaggeration'.

its that much of an exageration it warrants being called a nasty deciteful lie. we are talking 3X its rated power for a few seconds, basically only if you are setting up a warehouses worth you will have to take into account the startup current in the wiring calculations, from what I have observed all large scale instaltions have a limited number of lights on each switch so it is impossible to turn on 100 lights simultaneously as you have to switch on 5-10 at a time eliminating a huge power surge. yes the light output take a couple of minutes to reach its normal output level.

unfortunately there are a lot of crap energy saving bulbs out there giving them a bad name, I tend to go for well known brands like philips as cheapo no name ones tend to be the all feared yellowy colour. of course fluorescent lights are really yellow the same as incandescent lights are not quite white but rather yellow too. our eyes ajust automatically to the "white balance" rendering whites as whites under most yellow to white coloured lights unless extreme circumstances like bad quality bulbs or lights that are deliberately of a different colour
 
its that much of an exageration it warrants being called a nasty deciteful lie. we are talking 3X its rated power for a few seconds, basically only if you are setting up a warehouses worth you will have to take into account the startup current in the wiring calculations, from what I have observed all large scale instaltions have a limited number of lights on each switch so it is impossible to turn on 100 lights simultaneously as you have to switch on 5-10 at a time eliminating a huge power surge. yes the light output take a couple of minutes to reach its normal output level.

unfortunately there are a lot of crap energy saving bulbs out there giving them a bad name, I tend to go for well known brands like philips as cheapo no name ones tend to be the all feared yellowy colour. of course fluorescent lights are really yellow the same as incandescent lights are not quite white but rather yellow too. our eyes ajust automatically to the "white balance" rendering whites as whites under most yellow to white coloured lights unless extreme circumstances like bad quality bulbs or lights that are deliberately of a different colour

Actually fluorescent lights are all ultraviolet, the phosphur coating on the glass converts the UV to visible light. The resulting colour depends on the specific phosphur, and the colour temperature is normally printed on the box.

Can't say I've ever seen a fluorescent that looked 'yellow' at all, mostly they are pinky coloured.

Just checked two energy saving bulbs here, and one is specified as 2700K and the other is 3500K.
 
It's not a 'myth', it's an 'exaggeration'.

I see. So when someone spots a sturgeon in Loch Ness you will take that as evidence Nessie isn't a myth, just that her size and fearsome attributes have been exaggerated.
 
5500 K is daylight anything under will take on a yellow ting anything higher a bluer ting, apart from that it can vier towards pink or green despite colour temperature (or at least those are the controls I have in photoediting)
 
I see. So when someone spots a sturgeon in Loch Ness you will take that as evidence Nessie isn't a myth, just that her size and fearsome attributes have been exaggerated.

quite the fact of such an "exageration" is that it influences peoples choices, either in whether to have them at all or to leave them on hundreds of more hours than neccesary
 
Not related, but this reminds me about the "a car battery depletes enough energy for a start up, that it takes 40 km of driving to charge it again".
I have never done the math on that one, and Im sure it's true, but OVERKILL exxagerated.
 
Not related, but this reminds me about the "a car battery depletes enough energy for a start up, that it takes 40 km of driving to charge it again".
I have never done the math on that one, and Im sure it's true, but OVERKILL exxagerated.

Years back a friend of mine had a Mini, and one winter morning it wouldn't start and he turned it over until the battery was completely flat.

He then found what the fault was (something silly like the lead dropped off the coil), and bump started it to go to work.

Now the reason for this story is that he had previously fitted an ammeter to the car, so he could see the charging current. Now he was driving with headlights on, heater, and rear screen heater - and the ammeter was showing off FSD for the charge going in to the battery.

His drive to work was about 5 miles, in very low traffic, yet before he got to work the ammeter clicked back to zero as the battery was fully charged.

Millions of vans are used stop/start all day every day, you generally don't have any battery problems.
 
Not related, but this reminds me about the "a car battery depletes enough energy for a start up, that it takes 40 km of driving to charge it again".
I have never done the math on that one, and Im sure it's true, but OVERKILL exxagerated.

somehow we have gotten so used to the "it needs the same amount to start as it takes to run normally for "X" mile/hours/whatever" and it is the first stupid thing people say when trying to push something: its become a fashion.
 
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