How fuel additives help address rising prices at the pump

IndustrySearch: What are fuel additives and what are their main advantages?

Kevin Carpenter: Fuel additives are essentially chemicals that are used to enhance the properties of fuel. You can mix them with fuels such as petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, fuel oil and so on to improve fuel efficiency and economy.

The advantages of utilising fuel additives range from economical to environmental, and when mixed with your fuel, they help to improve the performance of your engine and vehicle, reducing corrosive effects and colloid deposits, enhancing combustion properties, keeping your engine clean, and ultimately saving you money.

There's also an associated environmental advantage in using fuel additives, it helps us to align to environmental emission control standards. Parts of engines where residue usually accumulates, such as the EGR valve, injectors and particulate filters actually stay clean, and the complete burn of fuel reduces harmful exhaust pollution by 40-98 per cent. 

In your opinion, what is the best way to maintain a clean and lubricated engine system?

One of the easiest ways to maintain a clean and lubricated engine is to use fuel additives, which help to clean carbon and colloid deposits from engines, and clean impurities and bugs from fuel systems and fuel lines. In my opinion, continued use helps to keep your engine and fuel system running at peak performance.

When your engine is clean and properly lubricated then no excessive wear can occur; no carbon can accumulate on injectors, valves and pistons. In using additives, you experience lower maintenance, less oil consumption, cleaner oil and filters and elimination of corrosion. I have even seen fuel systems suffering from 'diesel bug' be cleaned with a shock dose of XSNano fuel additive.

How do you see this technology developing in future?

I think in future, scientists and researchers will continue to work on developing this Nano technology even further in response to demands from specific markets. For example, new products were developed in China with a specific goal set in mind. With vehicle emissions, pollution and a shortage of fuel oil being amongst the biggest problems facing China today, scientists were given the task of creating a solution that would help to reduce pollution and fuel consumption.

In order to effectively control exhaust to reduce air pollution, scientists turned their attention to nano-materials technology and the development of a nano-material fuel additive, and now we have it. In 2008, XSNano was recognised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the only highly efficient physical based fuel additive.

Nano technology is one of the biggest breakthroughs in science in the past two decades. Sometimes I find it really hard to imagine this technology getting any better, but somehow it does. Nano technology has advanced over molecular technology (a nano is one millionth of a molecule). Currently, XSNano employs a research and development team comprised of 11 scientists from all over the world, so there’s no doubt that continued progress will be made.

What are some of the important applications of this technology?

Well, XSNano was formulated using nano technology, and nanotechnology is now allowing us to do things never before possible.

Nanoscience is the study of phenomena and the manipulation of materials at atomic, molecular and macromolecular levels. At this level, the properties of the materials at hand are considerably different from what you would be dealing with at a much larger scale.When you fragment materials down to the nanoscale, their physical properties change radically. Below a scale of 50 nanometers, physics laws no longer apply and the laws of quantum physics come into play.

XSNano fuel additive uses nano technology in order to efficiently and uniformly make water disperse in oil, forming a thermodynamically stable phase. This ensures that the formation of nano-fuel clarification is uniform and stable, which in turn makes fuel more efficient, is better for the environment and improves the performance of your engine.

By applying nanotechnology to oil, you massively reduce friction and wear, adding more economy and power. The nanoparticles are introduced to the fuel at combustion stage (never before achievable using molecular engineering) to give a complete burn of fuel. And since XSNano increases the burn rate of fuel, you actually reduce up to 98 per cent of exhaust emissions.

Would you say there is a growing shift towards the use of fuel additives?

Yes. We all want to reduce emissions and protect our environment. And whilst we've made steps in that direction by removing sulphur from diesel and lead from petrol, we have started to encounter the after effect this can have on our vehicles. We found that ZDDP (zinc dithiophosphate) was also removed from oil because it was corroding catalytic converters used to reduce emissions - what we were left with was engines and fuel systems suffering from friction and increased wear.

XSNano is now being added to fuel at the refinery level in China in order to combat these problems, which means we now encounter economic advantages, longer engine life, less wear and tear and the environmental advantages that we all want.

Besides the use of fuel additives in China, we’ve seen the slow introduction to other international markets. On the back of successful XSNano trials, there has been increased distribution throughout the UK and Europe, in countries such as France, Belgium, Turkey and Norway. In Australia it is up to the consumer to add XSNano themselves.

I think that with more successful trials, more international companies and communities will be prompted by benefits such as cost savings and having a more ethical approach to the environment, both of these results come hand-in-hand with products like XSNano.