Fuel savers by Pinoy inventors

Oil and water don’t mix, conventional wisdom tells us. Experience adds that fuel contaminated with water conks out car engines. But with fuel costs rising every week and no end in sight, engineers are taking a second look at old knowledge – and debunking it. Motorists too are searching for the ultimate fuel saver. Fortunately for them, two Filipino inventors have blazed trails since 30 years back on simple technologies that cut not only fuel consumption by half, but also emissions down to almost zero.

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One is water-in-diesel. Rudy Lantano has found that, with additive, water can blend with diesel for better combustion, hence less fuel use and pollution. More than that, it improves thermal efficiency, and thus powers up the vehicle for a faster ride with heavier load.

Here’s how Lantano’s blend works. With a little over a part of water to nine parts of diesel, fuel is atomized into finer spray. Larger surface area is then exposed to combustion. Water inside the diesel droplets explodes at high temperature, thereby dispersing fuel even more inside the combustion chamber for further burning efficiency. In the process, exploding droplets break down and disintegrate unburned carbon deposits. The result: cleaner chamber, lower emissions, finer lubricating oil, less need for engine octane or cetane.

Many thought Lantano crazy for coming out with his theory in the late ’70s. Undaunted, he experimented with additives to mix water with oil, using local wares like alcogas from sugarcane and biodiesel from coconut. Persistence paid off in 1996 when he won the World Intellectual Property Organization gold medal for outstanding invention. His additive is called Reloaded diesel, RL for short.

Last February engineers pulled over for tests a Toyota Tamaraw FX (license plate DWR 970) and a jeepney (PYT 417) with a Japanese surplus motor. The vehicles were chosen for the thick smoke from their tail pipes. RL was poured into the fuel tanks. Instantly the FX’s emission dropped to 80 percent; the jeepney’s, 53 percent.

Shell-Australia tinkered with its own mix and came up in 2003 with Aquadiesel: 85 percent diesel, 13 percent water, and 2 percent proprietary additive. Chevron and British Petroleum have picked up the idea. The International Energy Agency hailed the new fuel as a breakthrough saver for diesel vehicles that stop frequently and thus burn more fuel and emit more fumes, like buses and garbage trucks. But Lantano, who has been recognized by the Dept. of Science and Technology for 20 years, beat the big boys to it hands down.

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The other fuel saver is a four-inch metal gadget that flushes the right amount of air with gasoline in engines. Invented also in the ’70s by Pablo Planas, the air mixer reduces fuel consumption by 15-50 percent, although some users rave about savings of up to 80 percent. It also brings down toxic carbon monoxide emission to almost zero, better than the 4.5 percent ceiling set by the 1998 Clean Air Act.

Called Khaos Super Turbo Charger, it is mounted under the hood, fitted with a rubber hose to the intake manifold. The charger sucks in air and mixes it with gasoline inside the engine. The mix is what engineers have known for a hundred years for efficient gas burning: 15 parts air with one part fuel. With that mix, fuel burns efficiently whether idling or at high speed. Any pollution is the result of waste. But with gasoline thoroughly burned and used, engine emission drastically is reduced. This again makes for more engine power and, consequently, less repair and maintenance.

An auto mechanic and jeepney operator in the ’70s, when most such refurbished MacArthur-type jeeps ran on gasoline, Planas wondered why he smelled fuel while warming up the engines every morning. He inserted a garden hose into the tail pipe and, revving up the engine, noted that the odor becomes stronger at idle. Planas read up on automotives and came upon the long-known 15:1 air-fuel ratio. He then fabricated a gadget that gave such an exact mix.

Planas’s first chargers were crude. But he sold or gave away 500 of them to friends up to 2003. That year Planas met a financier crazy enough like him to venture into full-blast manufacturing. Soon Quezon City Mayor Sonny Belmonte met him and ordered all of city hall’s gasoline cars fitted with Khaos (named after the Greek goddess of air, Planas says). Belmonte’s trust in the nutty mechanic bore fruit in terms of million-peso savings in fuel budgets. Environment Sec. Mike Defensor and then-Energy Sec. Vince Perez heard about Khaos, too, and had their personal vehicles, a Ford E-150 and a Honda Accord, respectively, equipped. Defensor swears by 32 percent fuel savings; Perez, 50 percent. The Khaos brochure shows a photograph of show biz star Onemig Bondoc with a big smile for 30 percent fuel savings on his Jaguar.

Since then Planas has set up three small factories in Metro Manila and sold over 20,000 chargers through a hundred dealers nationwide. He also exports to 35 countries, where the charger sells faster for environment-friendliness. The charger costs P6,500, installation included, on either fuel-injected or carburetor engines. No adjustment of idling or timing, except on some older cars. This month Planas will roll out a smaller, cheaper charger for motorcycles (P1,500-P1,900); by July, a version for diesel vehicles.

Car repair shop owner Ogie Amada met Planas in October. He tried the charger on his car and immediately saved P2,000 a month driving from home in Angono, Rizal, to work in Sikatuna, Quezon City. He has since sold dozens of units to friends and customers. No complaints from them except this: "Why did you introduce us to Khaos only now?"

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