Acetone in Fuel

[yorta2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close yorta2]

Thought some members may be interested in this article, and wonder if it would benefit in bio use. Don't forget to scan down and look at the graphs. 2 ounces acetone to 10 U.S. gallons of diesel seems to produce the best results. Very interesting.
http://www.lubedev.com/smartgas/additive.htm

[darren leonadas Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close darren leonadas]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

I just learned about a fuel for Racing cars. called " Racing A" thats on the market today in Australia, and being used at bathurst and other race tracks already . Its 95% ethanol and 5% Acetone.
Tell a rev head engineer in the car racing game that ethanol (pure biofuel) is bad for your car and he'll laugh in your face. The world record fastest thing on the drag strip (notwithstanding jetpower) is burning Zero greenhouse emission biofuel.--ETHANOL
I just learned yesterday from Andy Fischer, that General Motors Holden is selling an Australian made Holden to the Brazilians that perfectly runs on E85. In Brazil you can buy almost pure Ethanol (E85%) at the servo and fill up your Monaro on it.
Meanwhile in Australia, according to Oil Corporations and Howard Gov. PROPAGANDA, just 18 months ago GMH and Ford Australia would not warranty new cars on any ethanol blend.
3 months ago after the most recent peak oil spike, the opposition (fat man Beazly) stated they would have a policy at the next election to invest in biofuels. Immidiatly, the same day, little johnny brownnose did a total backflip and got his mates at GMH and Ford Australia to sing along. The stupid thing is , thanks to little johnny's PROPAGANDA, Many people still belive the hype, and some fuel stations even have stickers on their premium unleaded bowsers saying " no ethanol" . If anyone can honestly testify to Ethanol stalling their car , they Probably haven't serviced their car for so long its simply so out of tune so far that its burning rich and dirty , no wonder the clean burning fuel stalled the car, " Oh but little johnny said it might damage my engine, even though not servicing and tuning my car will definitely damage my engine"
And we think we can beat them (Brazil) at football!!??

[Terry Syd Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Terry Syd]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

I wasn't impressed with some of his reasoning, things like cold weather increases power because it increases the viscosity of the air - it doesn't it increases its density. However, looking past his attempts to explain the phenomena, if it does what he says, then it doesn't matter if his attempts to explain are correct - it just does it.

I have used acetone as an octane enhancer in petrol engines. I've seen mixes up to 15%, but 5% is more common. The acetone takes a lot of heat to break down the structure of the fuel. That translates into slower burning, thus it can help impede detonation.

I have never heard of it being used in diesel fuel. If anything, it seems contraindicated, that is, we don't want to raise the octane of the diesel fuel. However, if his graph is correct (I have no idea how he obtained the figures for the graph) then a very small bit of acetone may increase the mileage. Does it do it for biodiesel? He mentions vegetable fuels, so maybe he is referring to biodiesel.

The figure of 2 oz per 10 gallons (US) translates to 59.14cc to 37.9 litres. Say, 60cc for 38 litres. That is not much acetone and I would be comfortable trying that in my vehicle - so I will. Like he says, find 100% pure acetone, the one without the evaporation inhibitor in it.

If he gets that much extra mileage, then there should be a corresponding increase in power. If there is no power increase, then I can't see how mileage can increase.

I just checked my math. Bugger if I know how I got all those conversions from oz/gal to litres??. The best method is just using a percentage - .2% of 38 litres is 76cc. (80cc in 40 litres, etc.)

That is a bit more acetone, but I will still give it a try as I'm sure the engine could take a lot more. As I am not driving that much every week, I am going to mention it over on another forum and see if anyone else wants to try it.

[Sauman Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Sauman]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

Tell a rev head engineer in the car racing game that ethanol (pure biofuel) is bad for your car and he'll laugh in your face. The world record fastest thing on the drag strip (notwithstanding jetpower) is burning Zero greenhouse emission biofuel.--ETHANOL>>>spot on!!!
I just learned yesterday from Andy Fischer, that General Motors Holden is selling an Australian made Holden to the Brazilians that perfectly runs on E85. In Brazil you can buy almost pure Ethanol (E85%) at the servo and fill up your Monaro on it.....>>>THEY HAVE BEEN SELLING FOR 3 YEARS NOW I think.
Meanwhile in Australia, according to Oil Corporations and Howard Gov. PROPAGANDA, just 18 months ago GMH and Ford Australia would not warranty new cars on any ethanol blend.
3 months ago after the most recent peak oil spike, the opposition (fat man Beazly) stated they would have a policy at the next election to invest in biofuels. Immidiatly, the same day, little johnny brownnose did a total backflip(ACROBAT A -LA -CLASS) and got his mates at GMH and Ford Australia to sing along. The stupid thing is , thanks to little johnny's PROPAGANDA(HE NEEDS TO GET THE ADD MAN OF THE YEAR), Many people still belive the hype, and some fuel stations even have stickers on their premium unleaded bowsers saying " no ethanol" . If anyone can honestly testify to Ethanol stalling their car , they Probably haven't serviced their car for so long its simply so out of tune so far that its burning rich and dirty , no wonder the clean burning fuel stalled the car, " .Oh but little johnny said it might damage my engine, even though not servicing and tuning my car will definitely damage my engine"

LITTLE JOHNY IS DANGEROUS!!!
And we think we can beat them (Brazil) at football!!??......LETS GET THE CUP HOME 2010....AUssie Aussie Aussie...oi,oi,oi,...we gave them a run for there money but...(Besides selling our Holdens).

When the Fat Boy and the Little Man gets the act together...that will be the Day.I am an optimist.

[Terry Syd Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Terry Syd]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

Some further research indicates that this 'acetone in fuel' concept has been done to death on a number of forums. Some people report some success, others say nothing happened.

The best result I could find were comments of 10-15% increase in mileage.

The Toyota Surf forum had a number of threads on it. The general concensus was if it did anything, that about 60cc for 40 litres of diesel (or biodiesel) was about the right mix.

I tried a bit and noticed that it did change the engine tone a little. There seemed to be a bit more low-end power. I didn't notice anything at full power. It may be that it works, but how well may depend upon your driving technique. In fact, if it tends to help with a bit more low-end torque, then maybe it is encouraging people to change their driving technique so that they 'short shift' the engine and keep it in the sweet spot of the powerband. That may explain why some have reported an increase and others have not.

This is an idea that needs to be put on a dyno and tested using two fuels and a switching valve. You could switch back and forth between the fuels and monitor the power and fuel flow. Trying to make an accurate assessment with the many variables of on-road driving is not very scientific.

[Guest Close Marc1]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

I just learned yesterday from Andy Fischer, that General Motors Holden is selling an Australian made Holden to the Brazilians that perfectly runs on E85. In Brazil you can buy almost pure Ethanol (E85%) at the servo and fill up your Monaro on it.

The above is of course only half true since a stock petrol car must be tuned and fuel lines and pump must be specially resistant to work with ethanol. Put 30% ethanol, (let alone 85%) petrol in your car and tell me you will have no problems.

Furthermore the addition of small percentages of ethanol to petrol only rises the overall petroleum bill for a country if you take into account the amount of fuel burned to produce ethanol and the additional fuel used because of the loss of milage suffered by the car using a mix.
If taken up in a major national scale like in Brazil the proposition may have a positive balance.
The way we had it allowing petrol station owners to adulterate fuel behind the back of the unsuspected motorist who paid through the nose with repairs, brake downs and fires, to save 2 cents and allowing the criminal owner of the petrol station to make bigger profits is absurd.

Biofuel, yes. Criminal adulteration, no.

[Guest Close David]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

While admitting I have no experience or knowledge to draw from, 60ml or acetone in 40L of diesel seems far too small a ratio to be of any effect at all. I know speedway racers used to use it ( and may still do) but it was in ratios of around 10% not .0015% as an additive to diesel fuel, I have to wonder if the mix were to be analyzed if the acetone could actually be found amongst all the other compounds in the fuel at that ratio.

60Ml in 40 L works out at .0015% to me, the numbers of that seem to be just too small in something that is as relatively impure and non constant as the chemistry of diesel which is changed and does have tolerances.

A quick look up of diesel composition says that diesel is made up of 25% aromatics which covers a few different compounds which may vary. To me, the addition of another .0015% aromatic seems unlikely in the extreme to be capable of changing the fuels properties enough to give such a marked difference in economy, especially when diesel is not a pure substance to start with and its composition can change widely from source to source.

As for the article, it seems there is nothing more scientific in the claims the guy has made other than saying he drives 70 miles one way on one fuel, runs a tank of normal fuel and then does the test with the additive. As this is presumably done at a later date, the myriad of factors that could have changed and altered the test results make the exercise completely meaningless. Differences in temperature,, humidity, wind speed and direction and traffic would be more than enough to render any test results useless.

As far as the properties the author of the article talks about in acetone, I believe the same thing could be accomplished with the addition of Nitro methane. This is used by racers as it too is a very slow burning fuel and I believe also releases a lot of oxygen when it is burned.

I would like to see some proper controlled scientific tests done on the addition of acetone but until I do see something I can believe in, I am going to find it very hard to believe that the addition of a substance at a ratio of .0015% is able to release enough additional energy from a fuel to propel a vehicle another 3-4 Miles per gallon.

[yorta2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close yorta2]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

David, nice to see you rationalising it all. However, I have been using it since I made the first post in this thread (@60ml per 38 litres) and have noticed a marked increase in power at the low end and a noticeable improvement in diesel consumption. This is with both bio and dino fuel. I think the power improvement means I use less throttle to get where I want to when taking off, thus leading to the improvement in fuel usage. Whatever, it is working for me and I'll keep using it. Now, I wish I could stop breaking CV joints in the bush.

[Guest Close David]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

Hi Yorta2,

As you give this a first hand reccomendation, I would like to test it for myself. I may be a sceptic but I am an open minded sceptic and am only too willing to change my mind in light of new discoveries.

I notice the article makes mention of certain types of acetone being the ones to use. Can you tell me what I should look for and the best places to source it from? I appreciate the qty's involved are small but do you buy it in bulk, say a litre or 5 at a time and if so, how much do you pay for it?

With fuel being the price it is, I would be keen to try it in my petrol car to see if I can notice any improvement in that. The article quotes 25% improvement in performance/ economy which is certainly significant enough to notice by seat of the pants measurement.

I was thinking of a test I could do myself with diesel. I have just bought a Diesel engined water pump which I am intending to use the engine from to power a generator. I'm thinking if I put a constant load on the thing ( either by pumping water or by electrical load) and measure the run time for say a litre of fuel, I certainly should be able to see if there is any difference between fuel with and without acetone particularly if I run the tests 3 times each. ( wow, a test like this could cost up to 10 Bucks in fuel! )
I think a test like that, as rough as it would be, could certainly give results which were definative enough to either prove or disprove the acetone theroy and would be enough to potentially change my mind.

Just re-reading previous posts, I see Terry suggested a valve to switch fuels mid run as it were which also seems a good way of measuring power. I wonder if the engine I have could be loaded up and then measurements of RPM be taken with one of those optical tacho's to get an indication of any changes this way. As long as the engine was loaded to hold the rpms below the max goverend speed I think this would be a sound test also. Now, how do I simply and cheaply fully load up a 6.5 HP engine?

I do have a couple of ways to measure exhaust temp. I believe this is significant on diesels but do not know why, Can anyone tell me what a higher or lower EGT means in relation to the power being produced?

[yorta2 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close yorta2]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

David, I had a one litre bottle of Glendale Acetone 99% W/W sitting in a cupboard under our kitchen sink that had been there for years - I am using that. I think acetone can be easily bought from hardware stores, such as Mitre 10 and Bunnings, and costs something like $10.00 per litre, but might be cheaper in bulk. (Not sure why I had this one, but probably for cleaning up an epoxy spill at some time - can't really remember.) At the rate I am using it, for my full 66 litre tank I only need about 104ml of acetone, so will get over 9 tanks with the litre. Not too expensive for experimentation. I would think that 99% is about as pure as I will get it. Good luck with your pump tests.

[brobin Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close brobin]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

While admitting I have no experience or knowledge to draw from, 60ml or acetone in 40L of diesel seems far too small a ratio to be of any effect at all. I know speedway racers used to use it ( and may still do) but it was in ratios of around 10% not .0015% as an additive to diesel fuel,

...well I HAVE used it in my 1993 Peugeot 405 SRDT..and it works quite well with mineral diesel. Better acceleration, smoother idling, higher torque, and a marked reduction in cabin engine noise. The ratio I use is 1.5 mL Acetone per litre of diesel.

My brother has also used it in his GXL Landcriuser with both petroleum diesel and Biodiesel. He gets the same sorts of improvements with BOTH fuels as I do on mineral diesel.

Have tried it on the wife's petrol car (2005 Hyundai Accent) with performence improvements noticed there too.

Just don't get it on the paintwork.

[geewizztoo Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close geewizztoo]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

Here's the results of my tests of adding acetone to biodiesel. I have been adding it at a rate of 30ml to 20L (0.15%) and the graph attached shows the fuel consumption with and without acetone (between the arrows).

This test was carried out in a 1993 Peugeot SRDT run exclusively on B100, mostly suburban driving during my normal weekly routine.

The x axis is kilometres travelled and the y axis is the running total of fuel consumed. The slope of the line is the fuel consumption (Litres/kms) and as you can see this did not change with or without acetone. The acetone was added to consecutive refills between 151,756 and 158,778 kms. The fuel consumption stayed constant at 8.6L/100km or 11.6 km/L.

I did not perceive any difference on starting, idling, acceleration, torque, amount of exhaust smoke or cabin noise.

[Guest Close David]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

That was certainly a good long test and one of the most long term I have seen on such a topic. You logged a lot of miles there and your results are certainly a lot more useful than someone only testing over a tank or two.

If there were any improvements in fuel consumption, they were too small to be of any value. Certainly there is no 25% or even 5% improvement as some people claim.

Pitty really, I'm sure we would all like to be able to get good increases in performance and milage by just doing somethng so simple as tipping some liquid in our tanks.

That magic bullet just seems so elusive dosen't it?

[snippy Biofuels Forum Newbie Find all posts View Profile Close snippy]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

I feel the graph is too perfectly linear and constant for comfort. No disrespect but techs at NASA couldn't be that consistent with their economy. Were you stuck on an oval track all that time with the same temps/weather every day too? Pull the other one

Your engine is rather old. How many miles your injectors already covered? Older injectors will not benefit much, as the droplet profile will be way off what the new high-pressure common rail systems manage, even with optimal surface tension modification from something like acetone.

Please excuse the impertinence of my post, but as one in the pro camp I have covered 30,000+ miles now in one of the best CDTi Turbo diesels around and the gains all around are real. A tank of unadulterated diesel feels like I unplugged my power chip. I accept fully some engines and driver profiles produce nil returns. Such is life.

[Guest Close David]

Re: Acetone in Fuel

Hello Snippy,
Always good to hear of people getting positive results with their experiments.

You certainly are perceptive!
Wayne does in fact work in the Aerospace industry developing cutting edge technologies. Obviously accuracy and attention to detail are critical and something he is used to. Given a couple of documentarys I have seen on mistakes NASA has made, it wouldn't be hard to outdo their testing efforts .
As such, you can rely on Waynes data to be a lot more consistant and honest than that of other people who are trying to convince themselves and others they have found some sort of automotive miracle in a bottle type of Holy grail.

Perhaps you could post up some of the results of the records you have kept or something that verify's the performance gains you allude to?
It's always interesting to see some sort of evidence of what people are claiming to give their statements some gravity. These days you have people fitting all sorts of crap to their cars claiming they do all sorts of things from making them taller to curing famine.
It certainly make things a lot more believable when someone does as Wayne has and documents their findings especially over many months.

I'm sure a lot more people would be interested in using techniques like this to improve the performance of their vehicles so easily and would be very happy to give acetone a try if they could see some evidence to convince them it is at least worth a try and not total bunk.

out of interest, what properties of the Acetone do you attribute to the improvement in performance of your Vehicle when using it and what principles of physics do you believe the acetone calters in your engine to allow the improvement you note?

Perhaps when you post up your findings more people will be motivated to give this a try and can then compare their results with yours and Waynes.