I saw this TV ad today and was wondering whether this had any merit. Has anyone tried this or known of anyone who has tried this?

http://www.gasadvance.com/

Sounds offhand like a load of well, you know what...

 

If it sounds too good to be true...

 

Considering that people use water to EXTINGUISH fires, I don't see how it can support combustion in a conventional engine. Water just doesn't burn.

 

One idea that I have heard recently as a possible way to use water to increase an engine's thermal efficiency is to run it as a 6-stroke engine: intake/compression/power/water injection/steam expansion. The water would be injected before the hot exhaust gases are released to generate an additional power stroke using steam inside the engine. This supposedly would eliminates the need for a radiator as the steam would act to cool the engine. Although that idea sounds somewhat interesting, I doubt they would be able to get such an engine to run reliably for a long time. The engine would also be terribly dirty due to running cooler, and there would be no possible way to run exhaust after-treatment. Finally, a lot of energy would be consumed to re-compress the exhaust gas, and inject the water.

A better idea for waste heat capture is BMWs idea using heat exchangers and a closed-loop steam engine, which can be built aroud a standard engine.

This proposed idea of "vaporizing the fuel using the exhaust with a reactor rod" sounds like nonsense, and as they didn't mention anything about generating steam power from the exhaust heat, I have no idea what the water is supposed to do in their system. Besides, even with a perfectly efficient engine (utterly impossible) it would still be exceedingly difficult to achieve 100mpg in a large SUV as they claim as it simply takes more work to move a big, unaerodynamic box than a small car.

 

My opinion is that it is another scam. They come up in google ads all the time. It only takes a few "I'll try it to see if it works" to make them enough money to continue.

 

It is BS in a normal car of course.
Now water has been used to get away with high boost, or high N20 injections(or both at the same time). I think the idea is to keep the CC temp low enough to supress detonation by squirting some water or methanol/water in the CC. I think the Germans used this method on some of their WW2 fighters to get a few seconds of boosted power -they would inject some water/methanol N20 in the SC engine and get an extra 500 hp for 10 seconds.
Luck,Charlie

 

Of course, I am reminded of my high school years when I owned a mo-ped (yeah, 49cc of fun, 120 MPG!) Lemme tell ya, sometimes water condensation would form inside the tank overnight and when I drove the bike it would sputter and pop for a mile or so until the water was processed out of the fuel line. If only a few drops of water can affect performance noticably, what do you think 80% water will do?

 

Any truth in the claims made on the website?

I wonder, if it is so cheap and so good, then why doesnt every car ave this technology?