Oil and water don’t mix. That’s the basic principle of lithography, by which this newsletter is printed. And yet there are liquids where oily substances are mixed with water; not in a chemical solution, but in an emulsion where tiny droplets of oil are mixed with tiny droplets of water. Ketchup, for example. One of the ways to achieve this is to use ultrasound, or sound at a pitch above 18,000 cycles/sec (inaudible to the human ear). The fast and forceful vibrations will break up both the oil and the water into tiny droplets and intersperse them in each other to form an emulsion.
But you can make more than ketchup that way. Inventor Eric Cotell used an ultrasound generator to produce an oil-water emulsion and burned it in his home furnace. He found that his fuel consumption went down by no less than 25%, and the mixture burned much more cleanly.
Boiler Engineer
The reason is probably that as the water explodes into steam, it shatters the oil droplets and exposes a large area of oil, which is then burned quickly and almost completely instead of going partly unburnt into the chimney as soot. The method is now being tried in two test projects under the boilers of state institutions in New York.
Can you do the same thing with gasoline to get more mileage out of a car? Very probably yes. Perhaps even more so, for apart from burning the gasoline more efficiently, there will be a “steam engine” effect, and the cleaner burning could possibly reduce or eliminate the need for gas-guzzling emission control devices. Cotell claims that as much as 18% water can be used in the water-gasoline emulsion, and Prof. W. Ewbank of the University of Oklahoma ic. now testing a 13% emulsion on some Postal Service trucks.
Anyone who has noted how a motorcycle accelerates when driven from arid surroundings into a humid forest will probably agree that the idea is very, hopeful. Alas, it won’t work on water alone.
Water Mixed Gas
To find out more about using water to run your car and get a free question and answer report please visit www.RunCar-OnWater.com [http://www.runcar-onwater.com]
boiler engineer