hmmm.. Did a search on the net and came up with this.. Sure it is just one persons opinion but it is quite interesting and the guy seems to know what he is on about..
http://www.dansdata.com/danletters173.htm
Here we go again
I know you're probably sick of debunking fuel scams by now, but I'm hoping to get your opinion on the products of a company called Firepower, as my father is investing with them, against my judgment.
They make liquid fuel conditioners that have many amazing properties that will apparently improve fuel combustion (scam alert going off already), improve fuel lubricity, provide water control and sludge reduction in diesel, and neutralize sulphuric acid in diesel. Their basic rap is that their additive will get rid of impurities, caused by a number of things, that will degrade or clog fuel system components.
This page advertises the product my dad mentioned he was impressed with. It's your basic bunch of claims with zero statistical evidence and mentions "independent laboratory testing", but not what the name of that facility was or where the test results can be found. The only PDFs at the bottom of the page are a laughable "Product Technical Specifications" which has a copy and paste of the page it's sitting on, plus a few hazardous chemical warnings, and a Material Safety Data Sheet, which basically replicates the hazardous chemical warnings from the first PDF.
Now, I'm not an expert in diesel mechanics or physics, so I can't tell whether the claims are likely to be bulldust or not, but this company seems to be making many claims for just one product and also does not offer much in the way of proof, two hallmarks of a scam. This page advertises a fuel "Pill" which, again, is marketed as a combustion improver, and actually has some independent test reports named and detailed that basically say it gave petrol a higher Research Octane Number, but then it also has testimonials on it like this one:
"The claims made on the Firepower Pill can be backed up by trying the products - it works" - Alan, Woodlands WA
In other words, you don't need empirical evidence when you can just pay them to try the stuff and GUESS if it's having an effect (and of course your favourability towards the product will be in direct proportion to the amount of money you just blew on it).
The product features of their Heavy Fuel Oil Conditioner are identical to their Diesel conditioner, and they've pasted some of the paragraphs into their Petrol Conditioner page as well (obviously leaving out the ones that refer to properties unique to diesel).
This is a West Australian company and my dad has been told that the Federal government is apparently interested in using their products (which I told him, even if true, does not prove their products work). The fact that they are not selling some hokey fuel magnet or fuel/air swirling device, but something you are physically adding to the fuel, gives me a little hope, but it still reads like a scam to me.
What do you think? Also, if it IS a scam, is my father likely to lose money investing in the company, or do these types of outfits still turn over a good buck preying on gullible consumers anyway?
Guy
Answer:
Yep, this looks like straightforward fuel additive scammery to me.
The excellent Tony's Guide to Fuel Saving site has pages that deal directly with many of Firepower's claims.
"More complete combustion" is a common, but badly flawed, claim. Even slightly recent petrol and diesel engines are very efficient combustors. If your engine is modern and in good tune and repair, there's close to nothing to be gained there. If it's old and in bad shape, no fuel additive will help.
Tony's got things to say about the notion that you need to add detergents to your fuel, too.
(Also note that it's normal for the major fuel formulators to add detergents and lubricity correctors to diesel fuel.)
And, of course, Tony's main debunking page also applies.
On this page, Firepower favour us with some plain nonsense: "When 91ULP, 95PULP and 98 PULP base fuels are treated with the Firepower Pill, the resulting fuel would comply with the Australian Standard."
Apart from the fact that it's ungrammatical, that sentence does not appear to contain any actual information, other than that their additive does not appear to ruin the fuel. Moving on:
"An increase in RON (Research Octane Number) resulted with the addition of the Firepower Pill. Intertek Testing Services (test report AU190-31230/4311000-November 2005)"
Uh, OK, but octane rating does not tell you how "good" the fuel is, only how resistant to detonation it is. If you've got higher octane fuel, you can compress the fuel more without causing engine knock, where the fuel/air mixture is heated so much by compression that it detonates before it's meant to be lit by the spark plug. Higher compression ratio engines, all things being equal, can make more power. That's all octane rating means, though. If your engine doesn't need high octane fuel, then it will derive no benefit from it.
(Some fancy engines these days can adjust their behaviour automatically to run better from high RON fuel, but they're not changing their compression, just spark and maybe valve timing.)
There are various flammables you can add to petrol to increase its octane number, without doing anything beneficial to its actual energy content or in any other way making the fuel "better". The RON of ethanol, for instance, is 129, but ethanol's not a particularly high energy fuel. You can just compress the heck out of it without making it detonate.
Different gasoline formulations have different mixes of hydrocarbons, which can have effects on various properties of the fuel besides the octane number. Density, burn speed, how fast your bank account empties when you start running your circuit racer on Elf racing fuel instead of pump gasoline. But you still shouldn't expect a special fuel formulation to make a standard engine perform better.
And then there's "The addition of the Firepower Pill to VK91 petrol achieved the requirements set out in DIN EN 228(N91). An addition in RON was also observed."
I don't know exactly what the difference between VK91 and N91 petrol are (if there are any, or if those are even types of fuel - the only fuel-related place on the Web where those two terms exist together is the Firepower page...), but it seems as if Firepower are again proudly quoting a test that said their pill did nothing in particular but boost octane, and letting the reader believe that that's something remarkable.
As you say, apart from those apparently irrelevant tests, all the evidence Firepower seem to have is testimonials. But the situation becomes even more bizarre when you notice the testimonials on the fuel-pill page about how it apparently made diesel vehicles run better.
Diesel fuel is meant to detonate. That's how diesel engines work.
Accordingly, increasing the "octane" rating of diesel fuel is undesirable. If anything, you want to increase the cetane rating, larger values of which indicate a greater propensity to detonate.
Don't worry, though - this magic pill lets you have it both ways!
Regarding the diesel additive - yes, increasing the lubricity of diesel can make the engine happier, and I suppose it's possible that the formulators of Australia's "low-sulfur" diesel don't add enough oily stuff to their products to entirely compensate for the lower lubricity caused by the low(ish) sulfur. Or, at least, that they don't add enough to bring it up to the lubricity needed for maximum engine, fuel pump, et cetera, life in old diesel vehicles.
There are many additives that can do this, though, including a bit of biodiesel or even (for most diesel engines) just some clean vegetable oil (fresh, or previously used for cooking; as long as you strain out the chunks and particles, you're OK) mixed in with the fuel. There's no need to spend big bucks.
I could take the time to look into Firepower's water/acid/microorganism-in-diesel claims, but the only people I can see talking about it, beside Firepower, are dealing with big stationary fuel tanks. Such tanks may, of course, sit there with the same fuel in them for months. Automotive fuel tanks are, in contrast, regularly flushed out with fresh fuel.
There's probably good reason to use some additives if you live in a genuinely cold climate and want your diesel vehicle to be able to sit with a quarter-full tank for a few days without something nasty (eventually) happening. Some diesel experts also recommend "fuel biocide" additives, to be dumped in the tank once or twice a year at most. So, who knows, perhaps the Firepower additive serves those functions. But you're wasting your money if you use it all the time, or in a climate (read: almost anywhere in Australia) where cold-weather additives of all kinds (fuel, radiator, whatever) are unnecessary.
Since Firepower's previous claims for their diesel additive are well-used falsehoods, I don't see a lot of need to look into the other ones in more detail.
to be continued
