Louis LaPointe has a secret. And he’s sharing it with the world, for folks like you, out of the goodness of his heart.
And it has big oil shaking in its boots.
They’re totally going to lose a ton of money.
You see, acetone is an organic solvent. It comes from various sources, but the most common source is cumene hydroperoxide.
Cumene hydroperoxide comes from isopropylbenzene.
And isopropylbenzene, is also known as cumene.
And cumene comes from… Crude oil?
Yup.
Acetone is an oil derivate. Shell Chemical LP makes acetone. Shell is probably the 2nd biggest producer of acetone in America. It’s led by Sunoco. Combined they own 49% of the acetone market. And Citgo is 48% owner of another venture that accounts for 11% of the market.
So show those greedy corporate oil bastards by buying their product!
Just curious… have you actually tried this yet?
Absolutely not!
But I have decided that I’m going to add about 4oz acetone to my 16 gallon tank on my next road trip. If mileage = 30 mpg, I’ll consider it plausible. >31mpg I’ll call it confirmed. I’m much less worried about potential damage from it now.
It’s not real scientific, but I have my own fairly good understanding of my highway mileage (of course I have no data to back that up DOH!). I also doubt my driving habits will change on the interstate because I mostly use the cruise at speed limit +10.
Even if it works, and it really catches on around the country, look for the price of acetone to skyrocket. Google around for “acetone market.” Acetone prices are highly tied to oil prices (duh), but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of extra capacity to make the stuff. (Acetone a base ingredient in the increasingly popular polymethyl methacrylate, aka PMMA, aka plexiglass.)
Another question is raised, too. If the oil companies are willingly putting in all these other effective additives (like xylene, iso-octane (aka 2,2,4-Trimethylpentane), and trimethylbenze) into their gas, why would they not include acetone?
And since you’ve done some combustion modeling, I suggest you read through some of the work and see how it sounds to you.