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Kids, do not try this at home. Researchers at Temple University have been experimenting with what happens when an electric current is run through fuel. Big boom, right? Well, apparently not.

According to a paper the Temple team has published in "Energy & Fuels", done right, a small electric current applied to fuel just before it enters the combustion chamber, makes for much smaller droplets of fuel which burn cleaner and more efficiently. The team installed and tested their device on a diesel Mercedes where it showed a 20% decrease in fuel consumption in the lab.

The technology is currently being tested on a fleet of diesel trucks in Pennsylvania. How soon might you see it on a car lot? Actually you may see it on a late-night informercial first.

The company will most likely bring the tech to market is the same one running the Pennsylvania test: Save The World Air, Inc. That's the same company that sells the MagChargR which is basically a magnet that supposedly does the same thing this new technology does. It's also the same company that at one time was selling the Zero Emission Fuel Saver (ZEFS) device which was basically a magnet that, um, did the same thing. The RAND Corporation looked into ZEFS and found "at best mixed results." STWA is also the company that was sued by the SEC for stock fraud.

So, maybe they've got something that works this time around, maybe not. The science sounds solid, but only time will tell if it translates into a working product.

[Source: Gizmag]

Electricity + gasoline = more mpg? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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