The most common automotive fuel, gasoline, is not composed of uniform hydrocarbon molecules. Gasoline is actually a mixture of many different compounds that are distilled from crude oil. These various compounds vaporize at different temperatures (or boiling points at which the liquid changes to a vapor).

Some parts of gasoline vaporize very easily at low temperatures to help get a cold engine started. These are the vapors you smell when you are filling your gas tank. Other parts have a much higher boiling point to prevent the fuel from vaporizing in your tank or in the fuel lines enroute to the engine. As a result only part of the fuel entering the combustion chambers is in a combustible state. The ignition of the gasoline-air mixture is slow and in fact incomplete which is why you smell hydrocarbons escaping your tail pipe and why the EPA requires a catalytic converter.

The addition of hydroxy gas through the air intake system results in a flash burn, completely igniting the hydrocarbon fuel. This results in increase power and torque and greatly reduced emissions. This gives the driver two options, enjoy the increase in power or throttle back and save gas.

Does this increase the temperature in the engine? No. The hydroxy flash turns into a water vapor. As the piston is driven down, the water vapor expands and absorbs heat and creates a cooling effect. That is why diesel engines run noticeably cooler when hydroxy is used. An added benefit is that nitrogen oxides emissions are greatly reduced, apparently because of the cooler temperatures.

Transmission shifting range requirement reduce because of the increased torque. A car that would normally need to reach 3,000 RPMs before shifting, can easily shift at 2,500 RPMs. Again, this allows lower gas use for the same amount of power if you have a manual transmission. Shifting range can only be changed in an automatic by modification to the car’s computer.

You may think to get MPG increase you should have a lean mixture. True, today’s cars are programmed to run richer than need. However, a lean-burn doesn’t get the maximum Btu content out of fuel. Lean-burn is a negative to thermal efficiency. Oxidation of gasoline must be at optimum proportions (stoichiometric) to get a full 17,500 Btu from each pound. A lean-burn won’t give increased mileage and it robs your power.

The air-gas ratio in today’s cars is pre-set to be rich. This allows some gas to remain after combustion to be used by the catalytic converter. Since you can not adjust the gas-air ratio on a fuel injected car (unless you have the ability to reprogram the parameters of your car’s computer) you can effectively use all of the gas you pay for through the addition of the hydroxy gas.

D.R. Young

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