Hello Edris Rahmati ,

Can you cite the articles, which mention this coupling between magnetic field and gasoline's physical properties? I have never heard of this effect.

Regards,

Thomas Cuff

Hello Thomas Cuff,

Many researches have been conducted in this field and one of them is attached below.

Regards,

Dear Edris Rahmati , I find it hard to understand how the article you attached passed the peer-review process.

That is: If any such review took place - many journals add little notes to articles stating when the first version was received, when the revision was received and when the final decision to publish took place. Not this one. And you'll notice some remnants of the document template on page 329. In my opinion a dead giveaway that no review took place.

Be that as it may, the real question is about the scientific merit of the text. Here, we have a complete lack of the rigorous documentation needed to take the experiments seriously. Just to give some examples, we are not told whether the load of the engine was controlled, we aren't really told how long each experimental run was, and yet fuel consumption is given as a fuel volume (measured in an error-prone way). This measure can easily be corrupted by something as simple as thermal expansion of fuel... We aren't told about any thermometer in the fuel tank, which probably means there wasn't any. There is a reason why, in the engine development community, fuel consumption is normalized vs. power output of the engine! Another suspicious detail is that the exhaust data (e.g. CO, CO2, HC) is given only as a relative reduction, which makes it impossible to check plausibility or to obtain an impression about the baseline of the engine.

The story about aligning fuel molecules in a magnetic field in order to facilitate reaction with oxygen has been repeated many times, which doesn't make it more true.

Hydrocarbons are diamagnetic. Categorically saying that "fuels are not magnetic - end of story" is thus a bit simplistic. I have actually discussed this at length for a German popular science magazine. A long chain molecule like n-dodecane (a commonly used substitute for diesel) will actually try to orient itself in a magnetic field.

But if you try to estimate the strength of the effect, you find that the time needed for the molecule to align itself with the field is of the order of 27 ns (for B = 1 T). This seems like a short time but it actually is not: At room temperature, the same molecule will rotate and collide with other molecules simply due to thermal energy. The rotation period is of the order of 22 ps, the time between collisions (with air molecules) is of the order of 280 ps. This means that the magnetic forces are too weak - by at least two orders of magnitude - to achieve any kind of significant "orientation" of the molecules.

In fact, an even simpler way too see this is the following: The potential energy of a dodecane molecule in a 1 T field (V=-m·B, with m~B) is around 15 neV, the thermal energy (1/2 k_B T) is 11.5 meV.

Long story short: Fuel properties are not affected by magnetic fields. Combustion efficiency does not improve when magnets are installed along the fuel delivery lines.

Hello Edris Rahmati ,

I am still confused. You say that, "Many researches have been conducted in this field", yet, you only cite a single article. Where are the other articles? In particular, where are the articles which experimentally show that "in the presence of magnetic field, fuel properties such as density, surface tension and viscosity will change."? It would seem to me that such measurements would be very difficult to do in the presence of a magnetic field. In particular, what would serve as the negative and positive controls? I am aware that the Reference section in the article you cited has some titles that imply changes in physical parameters due to presence of a magnetic field, but which of these articles, if any, provide direct experimental proof with controls? I mean, measuring the density of a liquid is a very common measurement made in a physical chemistry lab, using a pycnometer and an analytical balance, but how you do it in the presence of a magnetic field?

Regards,

Thomas Cuff

Thomas Cuff , for some strange reason the story persists that having magnets around fuel lines improves combustion. There are some of papers "out there" that purport to provide experimental evidence of significant (!) effects. As far as I can tell, mostly in obscure or even predatory journals (but there are exceptions such as SAE-Paper 2014-01-1398). Everything I've seen so far is of very dubious quality...

Usually, the measurements aren't actually done on fuels "influenced" by a magnetic field. Instead, the fuels are placed in a strong field for some time, then taken out and used for further experiments (measurements of viscosity, surface tension or engine tests) which implies some kind of memory effect. Control is a sample that has not seen the magnetic field; trivial things like making sure temperature is constant when measuring viscosity are not mentioned.

On a more serious note: The effect of parameters like viscosity on fuel sprays and on the subsequent evaporation and combustion has been studied extensively by (serious) researchers in universities and in the automotive industry. This is because a) fuel properties can change from one batch to the next, b) fuel properties change as the engine (and thus the fuel) warms up after engine start and c) alternative fuels (such as biofuels, of which there are different classes) have been considered and used in recent times. When you look closely enough, you will see that spray properties are indeed affected by density, viscosity and surface tension. However, the different chemistry of alternative fuels has a much more profound influence on combustion.

From these studies - and from understanding the actual loss mechanisms in combustion engines - we know quite well that even if, for some reason, there were a significant reduction of fuel viscosity, the actual effects on fuel economy would be quite negligible.

The sales pitch of fuel magnetizers is that combustion is incomplete and that this needs to be improved. However, in modern engines (especially diesel engines), incomplete combustion is essentially a myth. When you look at the "chemical energy" wasted due to formation of undesired pollutants (CO, un- or partially burnt hydrocarbons, soot), it turns out that they contain only a tiny fraction of the fuel's heating value.

Hello Philippe Leick ,

I was surprised by the citation, [12], to a US Patent (R. Z. Hricak, Air Fuel Magnetizer, US Patent No. 5,331,807, issued July 26, 1994) in the article Edris Rahmati posted. The References section of this patent lists patents going back to 1967 espousing claims on the influence of magnetic fields on engine performance. I know that there are two requirements for something to be patentable: 1) it cannot have been previously described in writing in any document in a library to which the public has access, and 2) it must be nonobvious. What I had forgotten is that it does not have to be based on a real, independently reproducible effect. I have attached a copy of this patent.

If Hricak's invention really worked, the automotive industry would have simply waited until his patent protection expired, 17 years after its issued date - assuming the maintenance fees had been paid by Hricak, and incorporated it in all of their vehicles.

One thing I have always loved about RG questions is the window they offer to the mindscape of ideas "out there", where, as the TV show "The X Files" reminds us, the "truth" is to be found. I don't know what the truth is, but I thought this was an interesting question, nevertheless.

Regards,

Thomas Cuff

Hi Thomas Cuff , I have seen quite a number similar patents.

Just like peer-review, the patent system isn't perfect and sometimes something gets patented that shouldn't be. It can be enough to claim a new twist on an old idea (like a magnet around the fuel line and the air supply of the engine, as in your example) and sometimes, maybe, the good people at the patent office just had a bad day. This problem is not limited to implausible claims, sometime ago we were troubled by a competitor's patent even though all the claims in said patent were already described in much older scientific literature...

Patent applications should contain novelties (1) and be non-trivial (2). But generally, neither of these two criteria will lead to an obvious and sharp demarcation.