..This cut/paste comes from a very large page on the subject that I found interesting since our last thread on the subject....
...cut/paste for your consideration...
The theory, so far as I can tell, is that it enhances the vaporisation of the fuel and so reduces the fraction that is wasted by escaping unburnt out of the exhaust or past the piston rings. While I have no specific knowledge of the effect of acetone on fuel vaporisation, it is nonetheless very easy to demonstrate that it cannot give a useful benefit via this mechanism. It is a very wel known that the vaporisation of fuel in a modern engine under normal operating conditions is already very good, and only about 1 - 2 % of the input fuel escapes unburnt. Hence, whatever the properties of acetone, it is extremely hard to see how the economy benefit can be more than this relatively small amount.
There are, of course, many people who have tried putting acetone in their tanks and reported huge benefits. But you can find equally powerful testimonial evidence for a whole raft of devices that have been scientifically proven to be worthless. Fuel consumption measured on the road is subject to so many confounding factors - traffic, journey type, driving style, weather, etc, etc - that it is very, very easy to see changes of 10%, 20% or even more, even when the true engine efficiency has not altered at all. The study considers the general risks in determining fuel consumption via uncontrolled on-road measurements rather than scientific testing. Some people have tried very hard to eliminate or compensate for the confounding factors, but in the end it is impossible to control them all outside of a proper testing laboratory.
Many "supporters" of acetone have tried it themselves with apparently good results, and are scathing of the experts who dismiss it on theoretical grounds without doing any testing. The point is, of course, that those same experts also recognise that any on-road testing they (or anybody else) do is essentially pointless, since it is virtually impossible to separate the true effect of the acetone from the "noise factors" - therefore, why go to the time and trouble of doing testing, when it can only produce an essentially random result?
Sterling Allan from Pure Energy Systems has done a lot of work on correlating results from people using acetone. Interestingly, Sterling reports that "typical" benefits are only 2 - 10%, and indeed his own carefully controlled testing ("Most Accurate Testing") showed no benefit at all. Given this, and the very large potential for errors in on-road measurements, it is not difficult to conclude that the "true" benefit may well be close to (or even exactly) zero, rather than the 30-plus percent frequently claimed.
Balanced against this fairly small potential benefit is the risk to engine components. Acetone is a powerful solvent that attacks many plastics, and while the majority of car components do seem to be resistant to it, such components are very rarely specifically designed or tested for acetone-resistance and so the theoretical risk is obvious. Those who have experimented with acetone say they have seen no problems, but without testing every plastic part of every vehicle, it's impossible to say for certain. Additionally, there may be specific risks to diesel engines - either due to acetone's tendency to mix with any water in the fuel (and then deposit that water, catastrophically, in the fuel pump), or since it may reduce the fuel's lubrication ability.
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