Despite the price of crude oil going down in price in the world market, there is still the issue of the world economic slowdown to be concerned about. Any amount of savings is welcome in these uncertain times, and one item in particular stands out when looking for ways to cut costs – the cost of gasoline. Today, people are clamoring for better gas mileage and asking car manufacturers to improve the fuel economy of vehicles.
The good news is that there are a lot of technologies out there available now that can help fuel savings. There are newly developed bio fuels, home made bio diesel, bio diesel conversions kits, and some which are not so well-known such as Hydro Assist Fuel Cells, and one other promising technology that has been in existence for a long time but is now only getting noticed is Pre-Ignition Catalytic Converter (PICC) technology.
This technology is in the early stages of development. But even at this early stage it is already showing its promise – up to five times gas mileage increase.
Already, every factory made car has a Catalytic Converter, and it is installed in the car’s emission system, right there in the exhaust pipe. It is used for emission control, breaking down the large gas molecules that were left un-burnt in your engine, turning them into smaller particles that can be incinerated in the tailpipe before being released into the air.
The PICC uses this system in reverse – instead of breaking down the gas for easier burning after it goes through the engine, PICC turns your fuel into a gas form, breaks down the fuel into smaller particles and THEN sends it to the engine. That means there is more burn happening in the engine using far less fuel. That is, theoretically, how the PICC will work.
How can fuel savings be achieved, and how much?
With modern fuel injection technology, car manufacturers have been able to control the entry of just the right amount of fuel into the combustion engine to improve a car’s fuel economy. With further tweaking and adding the PICC system, less fuel is needed to output the same amount of power from the engine, because the fuel is already primed to be burned more efficiently.
In one scientific test, a gas guzzling 318 V-8 Chrysler engine was run on a brand new state of the art dynamometer (the same testing equipment that Detroit uses) at 3,000rpms under a 50% load for an hour. Before the PICC modification, the engine used 18 pounds of fuel, which when converted approximates 22 mpg. Then researchers ran the same test with an engine with PICC modification and ran the engine under the exact same conditions for another hour. After the test, it was found the engine used only 2 pounds of fuel, a 9-fold increase in efficiency totaling a staggering 200 m per gallon, an amazing mileage from anyone’s standard.
Even in these early developmental stages, PICC is showing a lot of promise. For the regular consumer it means more savings and funds for other expenses. For the world, it means reduction in greenhouse gases. And for America, it means less dependence on foreign oil.
