RocketMan on 10/3/2009 at 02:11
Quote Posted by dvrabel
You have it the wrong way round. It's for the promoters of acetone to present the sound scientific evidence for its benefits. Everyone else simply has to debunk flawed research and bogus claims.
I thought I'd made it clear that I wasn't promoting it. I'm simply playing the side less examined since complying with everyone else would simply end the thread in 2 posts. I'm interested in the possibility that it does work, no matter how improbable that may seem at first blush. Not everything can be dismissed as bunk with the blink of an eye.
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Please explain why increased fuel efficiency would NOT be highly desirable for the cartels that currently control energy production.
I have no idea and I don't see how it's relevant. We could run IPods for years with less than a gram of Strontium-90. Why are we still using batteries? Same diff to me. I'd also like to point out that we haven't figured out yet if you'd even gain any mileage. Maybe the benefit is more power or better throttle response or lower emissions.
Printer's Devil on 10/3/2009 at 04:23
Quote Posted by RocketMan
I have no idea and I don't see how it's relevant. We could run IPods for years with less than a gram of Strontium-90. Why are we still using batteries? Same diff to me. I'd also like to point out that we haven't figured out yet if you'd even gain any mileage. Maybe the benefit is more power or better throttle response or lower emissions.
Incorporating radioisotopes into consumer products has already proven to be a bit problematic, so that's a specious comparison. Gasoline is equally hazardous with or without acetone, so the belief that decades of intensive scientific research failed to uncover anything seems odd. Even a 1% increase in fuel efficiency would justify testing crackpot theories, given global consumption. Tetra-ethyl and tetra-methyl lead were part of the fuel supply on even flimsier grounds, so where does that leave the conspiracy?
Muzman on 10/3/2009 at 04:39
There's a certain amount of lead-into-gold/vaccines-cause-autism mentality about these things.
It only takes one or two hearsay instances where it
really really seems to have been the case for some folks (not anyone here necessarily) to keep trying to prove it for all eternity. And no amount of counter evidence or evidence of abberation or illusion can convince them otherwise.
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Hey...get yerself a Diesel engine in your car/truck...then you can run it on old Chip fat...like we do over here.......just put a few % additives in and away you go....smelling like an old Chippy as you gun it down the street...
Have you done this yourself? How's it working out? Old vege oil has to be filtered and heated before it'll ignite properly. Sometimes both are done in the vehicle itself.
RocketMan on 10/3/2009 at 06:15
Quote Posted by Muzman
There's a certain amount of lead-into-gold/vaccines-cause-autism mentality about these things.
It only takes one or two hearsay instances where it
really really seems to have been the case for some folks (not anyone here necessarily) to keep trying to prove it for all eternity. And no amount of counter evidence or evidence of abberation or illusion can convince them otherwise.
Maybe I can't be my own judge but I generally do not consider myself to be one of those people. If evidence and scientific reasoning are able to refute such a theory I can deal with it. It's just that, not knowing any better right now, the idea seems plausible since ethanol in gas is a reality and they put it in there to lower emissions and raise octane as far as I'm aware. Why not another similar chemical that supposedly has similar effects? Far fetched? It's not like putting uranium in your tank....it's acetone. Maybe it's cheaper to use ethanol than acetone. Maybe ethanol has a smaller environmental footprint. What I do believe is that the powers that control things like what our gas is made of, don't really give a damn about what we want or what we know. If it's cheap, if it's green, if it's sustainable...these are likely the things that drive decisions to put X additive in Y gasoline.
I just thought of another example that might be on the same playing field. NiCd batteries are very very useful batteries. I know because I studied/study the shit out of battery chemistries and performance specs...I kind of have a thing for portable power. Anyway try and find them on the shelf these days. They're still around but pretty hard to come by. Stores are really pushing the NiMH and LIon batts as the powerhouses for the future. Truth is, while NiMH and LIon have higher energy densities, they are less robust to charging abuse, operating temperature variations and have lower short circuit currents making them inferior (if slightly) for the highest drain applications in the harshest environments. NiCds are like the acetone in a sense. Their toxicity and the scarcity of cadmium in the Earth are driving them to extinction however.
It's not the same thing exactly. Acetone wasn't used then put on the shelf but the take away is that the stuff we use the most isn't always the best or the latest and greatest. If anyone out there knows that acetone yields results, there may be reasons to suppress it in favour of something else.....then again maybe not. Who knows.
mxleader on 10/3/2009 at 06:58
You'll get way better mileage if you drink the acetone. :cheeky:
DDL on 10/3/2009 at 08:06
I'm finding it very difficult to envisage anyone, ever, deciding that strontium 90 could be a valid source of power for portable appliances. Unshielded? Hooray, your iPod is now a source of high energy ionising beta radiation.
Sheilded? Hooray, your iPod now weighs twenty times as much, and is a source of gamma radiation.
But don't worry, kids: it'll keep going for years! :nono:
I think in this case, since the impression I get from the internet is "nobody has any peer-reviewed evidence to support this, nor a scientific explanation of why acetone should do anything other than make your gas smell marginally worse", you might as well just use your personal experience as your benchmark.
And from the sounds of that, you've barely noticed a difference. Which in itself could be purely down to investigative bias.
Al_B on 10/3/2009 at 08:07
NiCad batteries may have uses but cadmium is being an increasingly controlled substance in electronics. In the EU RoHS regulated against it being used in many products and although this didn't cover batteries, the Batteries Regulations ((
http://www.rohs.gov.uk/batteries/) http://www.rohs.gov.uk/batteries/) look like its trying to do the same thing.
Out of interest, I may have missed this but is the cost of buying the acetone outweighed by the intended benefits?
dvrabel on 10/3/2009 at 08:34
Quote Posted by RocketMan
Stores are really pushing the NiMH and LIon batts as the powerhouses for the future. Truth is, while NiMH and LIon have higher energy densities, they are less robust to charging abuse, operating temperature variations and have lower short circuit currents making them inferior (if slightly) for the highest drain applications in the harshest environments.
Tolerance to charging abuse is irrelevant as all NiMH and Li-ion chargers have appropriate control circuitry to prevent it. The other drawbacks are not applicable to consumer electronics where higher energy densities are far more important. So NiMH and Li-ion
are the best batteries for almost all applications.
RocketMan on 10/3/2009 at 16:32
DDL: The problem is that I have never really been able to conduct a proper test of the effects. I'm pretty sure the acetone is doing something (good or bad) but I need to have a whole day to see what those effects are without noise from other sources like other gas additives or weather or what have you. If you know where I can get pure gas, not gasohol, let me know.
AL_B: A tin costs me about 10 canadian and lasts for about 10 fills. From my reading, if I were to use it as an ethanol replacement I may have to use as much as 500 mL per fill so that'd give me 2 fills per tin compared to 10 now. The economic advantage will depend on mileage and the subjective measure of what extra hosepower is worth to a person.
dvrabel: It's true that 95% of the public aren't going to need something like NiCd batteries but for the rest of us like me who likes screwing around with high current portable electrics it's a requirement.
Starrfall on 10/3/2009 at 18:21
Quote Posted by AR Master
YOURE NOT MY REAL DAD
Does this mean you have testosterone again?
Sorry for the interruption all you scientists can get back to your science discussion now.
