Awake again in the middle of the night, trawling the web for information about new scientific research and I came across this press release from a lab doing research into new fuel. Looks like their getting close to commercialising a fantastic new fuel range. I've cut & pasted the press release below.
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A Dutch research lab, with links to Shell Petroleum, has announced an exciting new brand of fuel that gives any petrol engine the potential for instant power increases of up to 50%, even if the engine is completely standard.
In addition to potentially huge power increases, the efficiency of the new fuel will result in increased mileage and greener emissions, thanks to a revolutionary new additive introduced during manufacture. Even better news is that the new super fuel additive is relatively cheap to manufacture and will result in pump prices that are only marginally more expensive.
“The technology is really very simple”, explains Dr Avril de Eerste from the Uurverk Brandstof Laboratoria, a fuel research institute in Eouvbinaad, Holland. “People have been using nitrous oxide injection systems for many years to give dramatic increases in power. Our new technology allows us to incorporate many of the advantages of nitrous systems directly into the fuel during manufacture”.
The advantages of using nitrous systems for automotive use have been clear for some time, although there are distinct drawbacks. Current nitrous oxide systems work by increasing the amount of oxygen that is available during the combustion process, but they use complex arrangements of compressed nitrous oxide gas cylinders (along with all the necessary pipe work and triggering mechanisms) to inject the gas into the engine’s induction system. The systems are heavy, they take up space and the compressed gas does not last long, all of which means the current technology is only suitable for short bursts of extra power.
“We have known the theoretical advantages for some time”, continues Dr de Eerste. “We have been working for many years trying to incorporate nitrous oxide into gasoline at a molecular level. The barrier has been that you can’t simply dissolve the nitrous oxide gas into the fuel, we had to find a technique to make the relatively small gas molecules bond successfully with the long, complex hydrocarbon chains that are found in everyday gasoline”. “The technology has not been available to us until recently; even though we knew the theory was sound” continued Dr de Eerste, “but with new nanotechnology and the ability to manipulate molecules at the atomic level we have been able to fashion chemical hooks all along the long hydrocarbon chains for the nitrous molecules to latch onto”. This means that each molecule in the regular fuel can now be engineered to carry up to 50% nitrous oxide”.
In practise this means that all the advantages of nitrous oxide injection systems can be carried directly in your fuel tank, with no extra complexity or weight. Furthermore, unlike the momentary bursts of extra power from today’s systems, the new fuel will continue to provide extra efficiency for the whole range of the fuel tank.
“Primarily, we did this research in an effort to create cleaner fuels and reduce carbon emissions”, said Dr de Eerste “but naturally, the people who formulate our fuel for race engines soon got wind of this and we realised the power gains that could be had.”
Scientists are now working on different ratios of nitrous oxide carried in the fuel. There is an obvious need to limit the increases available to standard engines to make sure that the engine can reliably cope with the additional power produced; but for race engines, there is huge opportunity to boost power beyond the scope of normal tuning.
Full details are on the lab website at
www.uuverkbrandstoflab.nl
01-Apr-2006, 11:01 
Jools
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