diesel fuel additives... efficiency? 1

[spacetruckin]

Hey Everyone I am new here but i have question for ya...

I have heard about a diesel additive that is supposed to "improve the combustion process and reduce friction, increase fuel economy while reducing emissions and engine wear".

its produced by inviro fuels or something like that.

anyone use it?

any info on it?

thnx

ST

 

[ivymike]

As I understand it, those are just test protocols used for emissions testing of certain engines for vehicles (are tests on these cycles even required for oil or fuel additives? required under what law?) ... I really doubt that Mobil has spent $512M and 192 years on testing of each of their oil products... how is it that these "foxes" get away with shirking the requirements?

 

[dickon17]

The Lubrizol Corporation recently tried to introduce an environmentally friendly diesel fuel called “PuriNOx” into California. If you Google the word “PuriNOx” and look at all the hits you should get a flavor of the regulatory nightmare involved in getting a new fuel technology into widespread use. This adventure was too much, even for one of the world’s largest fuel additive manufacturers.

 

[dickon17]

To be legally able to sell a fuel additive at the retail/wholesale level all you need is EPA registration. This is a relatively simple, no cost procedure. Provided anticipated sales are less than $30 million per year, no testing would be required. Beware, product claims could come under the scrutiny of a State Attorney General, who could easily close down any company (as recently happened to Bioperformance).
The very best way to get widespread market penetration is to lobby the legislature to write a law forcing the oil companies to add the “product” to all their fuels (as was done with MTBE). When such huge amounts of money can be made by using this tactic, why worry about a few millions of dollars in testing costs to prove emissions benefits.
The fuel market is totally dominated by the large oil companies who can aggressively lobby for any threatening technology to forever undergo series after series of expensive and time consuming tests. This tactic works quite well.

 

[drwebb]

Last time I checked (ca. 5 years ago) EPA fuel additive registration only required no testing if the additive satisfied the 'substantially similar' rule. This tends to limit really innovative technology.

Point of fact about the MTBE fiasco is the legislation only specified that fuel would have to be oxygenated, as I recall, to reduce ground level ozone- the EPA didn't mandate a carrier. MTBE had a cost advantage as well as no consumer connection to the 'gasahol' fiasco of the late 70's and was the preferred additive. When it started showing up in groundwater due to leaking underground storage tanks (usually along with benzene, toluene and ethylbenzene which surprisingly no one seemed as concerned about), it was banned leaving ethanol as the preferred and currently politically advantageous replacement because it's 'renewable', but supposedly this has driven the price of milk and beef up of late.