Oil & Gas Technology

Drew K,

I respectfully disagree this blog entry is an advertisement. In the text that appears on CR4, there is not a single mention of an Algae-X product. Therefore, I don't see how Algae-X is portraying its products (which it doesn't even mention) as "the only solution".

I do share your interest in reading about this and other products or methods, however. If other vendors or experts in the fuel filtration marketplace would step us and blog with us, they'd find that our door is open.

So who are some of the other vendors that you'd like to hear from? Please let me know and I'll contact them. I can't promise that they'll engage our community, but the fact that a competitor (Algae-X) is "on the scene" might spur them into action.

Best,

Moose

Where did this blog come from? Was it initiated by a member or the business?

I ask because if it were a member then it is their responsibility to showcase other products to prevent the appearance of CR4 endorsing this product. Also, shouldn't this be in the commercial section?

The problem I and other members who stated here have with this product is that it has 'snake oil' cure-all feel about it. It seems like something I would see on an info-mercial where the product is just too good to believe. I am not the only one to get this vibe from this product and feel it might blemish CR4's image if members and guests thought it was being endorsed by CR4.

If you want to showcase a fuel additive that is not snake oil and many members would not be familiar with, find out more about this product used in military jet fuel.

Drew

Drew,

This blog entry was written by a company called Algae-X. Here's their web site, and here is the link to the company's profile on GlobalSpec. If you haven't heard of them before, it may be because your background is in military aviation rather than marine applications or mining. But please take a look at both links and then let me know if you still think that what Algae-X has to offer is "snake oil".

So how did this blog entry get here? Please let me explain. Now that I'm no longer moderating the site, I have more time to look for content - sometimes written by businesses - that I think would interest the community. Let me clear: CR4 is not endorsing anyone's product, nor are we paid to publish this content. And if you look a lot of trade magazines, you'll find that quite a few articles are written by people working in the business. Who else has the expertise? Do you, for example, have time to write a blog entry for CR4? (If you do, please let me know - hearing about what you've learned in your career would be great for the site.)

Hey, I'd love to get some suppliers of Prist, the fuel icing inhibitor that you reference, to come and "talk" to us, too. But there's one of me and a whole lot of companies. I have to start somewhere with my efforts, and I was able to get Algae-X to work with me. In my opinion, the blog entry above is not an endorsement because it does not promote their products, bill them as "the only solution", lists prices or costs, or criticize competitors. Had their content done any of these things, it would be an advertisement and moved to the Commercial Space section.

Sorry that this comment is so lengthy, but there's an awful lot of carping around these parts lately about "the new CR4". If more people would follow your lead in trying to get some facts before issuing opinions, we could be a tighter (and better) community.

So thank you for asking your questions. I hope I've answered at least some of them.

Moose

Moose, I appreciate your response, and will look into the links your provided. I hope this product is what it claims to be. I do not get much confidence from the advertising page this blog linked to.

Drew

This is a testimonial (an editorial no less), not a science article I found in the links your provided. It does speak well of the product, but lacks the real scientific data an article would provide.

Beneath a picture of a metal cylinder described to be the 'magnetic fuel conditioner' it speaks of flocculated particles. This term was new to me so I researched it and found it to describe charged molecules suspended or dissolved in a fluid. This fit what the product claims, but the problem is the article I read described chemical means of dealing with flocculated particles, not magnetic.

I am not a chemist but from my one chemistry class I understand that charged molecules are not magnetically attracted. The problem I have with the Algea-X product is that it claims magnets will magically clean your fuel, this I do not believe (other than the removal of iron, steel, etc. particles).

I will keep reading when I have more time. Perhaps someone else following this thread who knows more chemistry can read the testimonial I linked above and provide better insight.

Drew

Ok. I have done enough research. You are not going to convince me this company is anything but a scam. The jury is still out on the fuel additive, but any company that sells magnets for the fuel system is just trying to scam the customers. Here are several sites that I have found debunking the myth that you can make fuel burn better after exposure to a magnet.

Just to be fair, I did send a message to my chemistry instructor who has a Doctorate in organic chemistry. I will update this post if he gets back to me with anything surprising or that disagrees with what I post now.

This is cut and pasted from the website where I found the links below. I think these credentials give this guy some expertise on the subject. Also I include a quote he placed at the bottom of his webpage.

Stephen Lower

is a retired faculty member of the
Dept of Chemistry, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby / Vancouver

Why do I waste my time on this stuff? Chemistry is my favorite subject, and I hate to see it misused to confuse, mislead or defraud the public.

First link Stephen's website, it starts talking about magnetic water gadgets, about halfway down he gets into the fuel gadgets.

Next is a skeptic committee website.

And in conclusion, is the U.S. Federal Trade Commission which lists the name of several magnetic fuel gadgets it tested starting about half way down the page, but at the top it lists the results of the many tests conducted.

I will email Stephen Lower and see if he will be willing to look into AlgeaX for me.

Is this enough to warrant CR4 looking into continued support of this product? For the record, it is not the user or this product that 'makes my blood boil', I am just not that concerned about it. I only put this much effort into it because I don't want to see someone visit CR4 and see a product like this as endorsed by the same members who give CR4 its credibility.

Like many members here I do not support pseudoscience or over-unity devices, or make incredible claims without the factual science to back it up.

Drew

Thanks for conducting this research, Drew. Hopefully, Stephen Lower will have some time to look into this, too.

With regard to your comment above, I hear you loud and clear. I understand that I'm not going to convince you of anything about this company or its products. But it's not my job to do so. That responsibility rests with Algae-X. So, I've notified them that some CR4ers think their products are a "scam", and that it's in their best interests to visit this thread and defend themselves.

Again, I disagree that the blog entry above represents CR4's "continued support for this product". The text of the blog entry does not represent a product endorsement, nor is it an advertisement. So, if you and I can find any consensus, it's that we agree to disagree. But that's not a bad thing. In fact, it's part of CR4's strength.

Best,

Moose

Kudos to Drew for pointing out the pseudo-science scammy nature of these infomercials and for speaking for the contributing community here, who do not want to be associated with, let alone be seen as actively promoting (by offering many pages of blog space) fuel line magnets, perpetual motion machines, HHO devices, etc.

CR4 should shut down all these "blogs" by AlgaeX.

With this post (and by shutting down one of these threads) Moose has taken a good first step. CR4 might try taking the high road, as reflected in some of the the more ethical magazines, where editorial and advertising departments are not one and the same. Yes, GS is all about making money, but throwing ethics out the window, can, in fact, reduce profits. (Read Collins's Good to Great)

As long as the fuel is clean, I would mix it with fresher lighter colored fuel and move on with life. There is no problem with simply old fuel, other than the spark may not be "up to snuff" for peak performance and easy starting. Mixing it with fresh fuel does wonders, and as soon as you get it burning, it does the work it is expected to do with no ill effects on the engine.

Run dirt through your engine, and expect to buy a new one soon. Throw some dirt in your oil (or skip the change, or ignore the filter) and you ought to be pricing that new engine today - you will need it soon!

Products in either gas or oil simply raise your cost of operation. Singular Exception to that rule: Put some stabilizer (no brand is better than rest) in the fuel and/or oil if you plan on a long storage (longer than a couple months) - and change the OIL last thing before the storage (dirty oil has acids in it).

Agree completely that the only fuel or oil additive that might be advisable under some circumstances, would be a stabilizer. I went on the website of this Algae-whatever company, and it seems that fuel stabilization is at least one of their claims for the featured product. But like you said, any fuel stabilizer, regardless of brand, is probably fine. The fact that this company makes so many additional "miracle" claims for this stuff, makes me suspicious and less likely to buy. What REALLY causes me to think that this company is a snake oil (pun intended) sales outfit, is that one of their products is a magnetic fuel "conditioner," where you stick a very fancy looking magnet on your fuel line. This is pure bunk, despite the scientific looking claims! This puts the credibility of this whole company in the waste oil bin, as far as I'm concerned. Rayzer

Diesel fuel can range from colorless, to amber or light brown color, depending on the crude oil and the refinery process used to produce it.

........automotive distillates can be also be a reasonably dark colour as well, for the reason you outlined. Whilst all distillates produced must meet certain requirements, dependant on their grades, the only test that you can make on the top of the range distillates, apart from sending it for analysis, is its clarity.

If the fuel is clear, it generally indicates it is not contaminated, if it is cloudy it is contaminated, and it does not really matter what the contaminant is............do not use it in high speed diesel engines (over 1 500rpm). Assuming the fuel is being pumped, take a sample in a small, clear glass jar.........wait 30-45 seconds.........if it is clear the fuel is probably OK.

Rotating the jar to make a vortex in the liquid will help you find contaminates or water in it. Also, water can be observed better by adding a drop of food color.

Drew

Hi Drew.

The problem is some of the contaminants may not show, e.g. microbiological and the sample will still appear cloudy (maybe!!!!)

Water should not be a problem with diesel fuel because the fuel system should have a water trap or sedimenter fitted.............and an agglomerator can be fitted as a secondary filter on fuel systems for smaller engines, this will prevent even minute droplets water, that may get past the water trap, from passing through to fuel injection equipment.

When you get up into large diesels you will have centrifuges fitted and they will remove just about every contaminant

Hi,

Can we use a diesel magnetic filter in the fuel lines to clean diesel in our vehicles?

I'm talking about:

EMAG diesel filters:

Only if you feel the need to filter out metal shavings, but you would be better with a normal fuel filter that will filter brass shavings as well as iron / steel.

Drew

Hi headers,

Let me ask first, what is the fuel like in your tank?.............it should be clean.........if not you possibly have a problem with your supplier..........maybe he uses magnetic filters!!!!

If you are running one of the latest engines with Piezo electronic injection and VTG, the manufacturer no doubt suggests that you use ELS automotive distillate. You will also have fitted a 2 micron filter to your common rail fuel system.

Providing your fuel is not contaminated you should be OK.

As far as magnetic filters go........forget it.........I don't recall ever being taught that algae or any other form of microbiological growths were magnetic??????

Hey Thanks Mobi,

It was just a clarification. I had heard about some Emag Diesel filters that could be used in automobiles and hence this question.

I too was not clear how this work on the fuel lines though!

Cheers

These fuel mag filters (made by the Kiwis), have been around for many years.

The Algae X filters...........probably a copy (only a guess)..........both claim amazing results.........see below

..........clears out all the "magnetic" algae?????

........even if you have dirty fuel tanks, it will clean them like new........probably cleans the magnetic water out too.........could turn it into steam?????

..........methinks plenty BS.

@MOBI - thanks a ton,

So, you think the FUEL MAG is BS? Just wanted to know the truth before I try them on vehicles that run CRDi Engines.

Thanks again!

........with Algae X system you can even have your fuel polished!!!!!!

Wow! What one could do with polished fuel!!!!! The mind boggles as to what could be done with this "technology."

Maybe.........just maybe.......... the polished fuel could be slippery, this would allow the "magnetic" algae to slip past the filter...........hence no need for the filter after all.

Whatever happened to the good old Racor primary filter and a 2 micron secondary filter (or twin filters).............and clean fuel tanks.......then ensuring no water gets into the fuel tanks.........problem solved.

Some water arrives in your tanks from the refineries. I have seen very cloudy fuel come into my tanks directly from the refineries. We then have to run it through our filter / coalescers to remove the water. I don't recall seeing it with gasolines, but diesel and jet fuel can have entrained water that can only be removed with proper filtration or the addition of a 'dry-gas' ethanol. But you have to be very careful with additives to diesel, it doesn't take much to mess up the flash point which will cause damage to engines.

With all I have read about this company and its products, I would have a flash point test done on a sample of fuel mixed with their product before I began using it.

Drew

Hi Drew,

Some water arrives in your tanks from the refineries.

Sure this can be a problem. I ask the question. "Do you get your fuel directly from the refinery, or via a supplier?" I may be wrong, but I would suggest the latter.

Some suppliers do not have a particularly good reputation and may offer cheaper fuel, and because their movement of fuel is low volume and their storage facilities not particularly good.........water gets into their storage tanks.........they cannot be bothered draining water from their tanks and hence comes to you.....and of course you pay for the water as well.

When fuel (say ELS automotive distillate) leaves the refinery, it must meet certain strict requirements, including water content, well thats the way it works in Australia..This type of fuel, in marine applications, has a shelf life of six months (due to effects, in the main, of sea water contamination).

........you have to be very careful with additives to diesel,

Couldn't agree more, and even more so with lubricating oils, many of these K-mart $10 specials will cause more problems than the contamination.......or whatever else you are trying to stop or improve.

I worked in the Air Force with fuel that arrived via pipeline from terminals in 4 countries around the world. Turkey was the only place where we had problems with the fuel we received had more than occasional problems. The problems we had there were mainly due to the different standards in pipeline and tank farm maintenance, and the fact that criminals liked to break into our pipeline and steal fuel.

I also worked (in the U.S.) for a pipeline company that received its fuel via pipeline directly from the refineries. Occasionally we would get a batch of fuel that was off spec, we would correct it as we could by blending or filtering it.

Many of our open roof floating pan tanks were for gasoline (to reduce evaporation), but sometimes when necessary we would put diesel or jet fuel in them. The open roof tanks have a seal around the floating pan that is not 100% effective so before we send fuel out of our tank farm we always drained water from the sumps.

This water in the fuel is not much of a problem because it is easily removed by draining. The problem we have with water is when the fuel arrives cloudy with entrained water. Odd thing is fuel can be wet and not cloudy too (temperature can hide it) so we sample each batch of fuel that either passes by our tank farm or we receive. We keep the samples after running tests for about 2 months. We run tests for flash point, octane, and water; the chemists in the lab also run other tests (beyond my knowledge) using spectrographs and such.

If water is entrained, we run it through the filters from one tank to the next and sample it again. At my tank farm the only fuel we regularly filtered was going to the airport via another tank farm. We used large capacity filters and sent it via epoxy coated pipeline to our small tank farm nearby the airport. It was filtered again by micronic and coalescing filters before going on to the airport. Additionally we sampled that fuel and took it to a private lab for analysis before letting it go to the airport.

In my fuel career, the volume of water in the filter / coalescer elements did not amount to very much. Even on the pipeline, with the high volume filters, I would say it was only a few gallons in a batch of fuel measured in tens of thousands of barrels. At one Air Force Base in a southern state in America, we occasionally would drain a gallon or so from a 6000 gallon fuel truck, but we always suspected it came from our own leaky roofs in our geodesic dome covered floating pan tanks. The volume of water in fuels I have encountered in my career would not add up to a significant amount that would have to be paid for along with the fuels.

I realize that I have rambled on for a bit here, I hope I have answered your questions.

Drew

Aha! That certainly throws some light on the subject Drew, thanks for that, very interesting reading.

My interest in fuels is from bunkers in large slow speed marine diesels to automotive distillates for high speed marine diesels............just an area I cover in teaching marine engineering.

You would have appreciated our Yurmitalic facility in Turkey. We offloaded barges (ships?) into our tanks on shore then sent it via pipeline to Incirlik Air Base. The facility had been shut down for some time when I got to tour it, but I saw pictures and heard about how we had a (sea?) hose that went out into the harbor and was recovered via its buoy and the barge / tanker would pump the fuel to shore.

We didn't have much trouble with water in our fuel there.

The water in our fuel from the commercial pipeline did have some problems though. These are pictures of what we took out of our basket strainer that was just upstream of the micronic filters (which registered excessive differential pressure and shut down)

Drew

Love the photographs Drew............for the life of me! I cannot why understand why you had excessive differential pressure across the micronic filters.........hahaha.

Looks like a couple of dogs could have got into the line........and/or large large rabbits.

The round-ish objects are mud that rolled down the pipeline into that shape. The really interesting stuff are the objects Ahmet is holding, metal, feather and an desiccated lizzard.

Drew

I detect a tiny bit of skepticism here. That this product works as claimed is proven by their description, because it has technical words. Their words are in this post. (You might whine about the fact the words taken together, and in the presented order, are absolute hogwash. Ya got me there.)

But there is no denying that the words would sound good to the people inclined to buy fuel line magnets. Isn't that the important thing?

Hi guest,

You might whine about the fact the words taken together, and in the presented order, are absolute hogwash.

Is hogwash a technical term?

............it's like believing in fairies............manetic water and magnetic algae??????

An interesting point, assume your fuel is a double bottom tank or a service tank that is lower than this magnetic filter...........kinetc energy of the fuel???????.........or, has the definition of kinetic energy changed?.......or was that potential energy???

Your pic of the NZ unit appears to have exactly the same casting as the US unit. Maybe Bill, when he returns, will let us know what the connection between the companies is.

Many scams operate from a grain of truth. For example, very strong alternating magnetic fields can effect the rheology of diesel fuel. (The weak stationary field from the "ceramic magnet" claimed to be in the NZ product does not have this effect, however. Bill will, no doubt, claim that moving the fluid past the magnet provides the necessary dynamic field effects. This would be incorrect, but it sounds good. Bill might also point out that moving fuel has kinetic energy. This too is correct, but a distractor.) All this theory means nothing.

Bill will provide us with test results from a recognized university or governmental agency, to counter the test results from others (such as the EPA, Mythbusters, Popular Mechanics, etc) which indicate that these devices do nothing. CR4, having brought this blog to us, will perhaps help Bill produce the documentation for these tests. Any theory about how this magnet works is useless: the only useful info is verifiable, reproducible test results.

Yes, hogwash is a technical term describing a liquid that has a large amount of dihydrogen oxide, and occasionally even surfactants.

I thought hogwash was hydroxylic acid.............and as you said may contain surfactants............and in some cases heaps of other crap.

Hydroxylic acid is a vital component of acid rain. It is well known to cause diarrhea and vomiting, and even sometimes inhibits brain development in embryos. It causes skin to become weak, and was found in tumors. And yet it is a rather common chemical. Its production is a multi-billion dollar business. It is used in paint, glue, and even personal care products and food. Also, it is known that this acid is often disposed of directly into rivers and seas

Response to Stephen Lower Since he has done the 'research', and cannot be deterred form his opinion that our company is a scam, there is not much to say to him. Let me just point out to others who have an interest that the physical chemistry of hydrocarbons is a very complex discipline. It is no secret that fuel quality degrades over time, and that the effects of fuel degradation impact engine performance, maintenance and emissions. There are numerous causes of fuel deterioration including: time, oxidation, thermal impact, water, microbial activities, etc. These forces product a variety of sediments from the fuel that are responsible for the negative effects on the engines. The sediments consist of agglomerations and repolimerized hydrocarbons. The fact that inductive energy from a magnetic field disrupts the clusters of hydrocarbons dispersing them into smaller segments has been demonstrated extensively. The reduction in the size of the clusters leads to improved engine performance, reduced emissions, longer service life of fuel filters and injection system components. We will be happy to discuss this and any other question readers of this blog may have. Bill O'Connell

Bill got any data to back this statement up?

The fact that inductive energy from a magnetic field disrupts the clusters of hydrocarbons dispersing them into smaller segments has been demonstrated extensively.

what about data supporting any of the many claims your company is making reduced emissions, performance, service life. I don't mean testimonials...

Have your products been evaluated by the EPA, which is required for any product involving fuel or emissions systems

the fuel additive is either required to have an exemption or is subject to road use taxes.

The fact that inductive energy from a magnetic field disrupts the clusters of hydrocarbons dispersing them into smaller segments has been demonstrated extensively.

At Exxon, we have not been able to demonstrate any disruption of "clusters" of hydrocarbons when moving a fuel through a magnetic field. Please provide links to peer-reviewed papers in which this demonstration has been made.

Thanks in advance Bill.