Selenium in gas to increase FE?
 

Could prove interesting.

I'm doubtful. I made a concoction that increased run time on the lawn mower 10% and no improvement with FE in the car. Are not newer cars burning all but about 2% of the fuel? Anything that claims to make gas burn more effieciently with a increase of more than that without any engine modification (timing, EFIE, ect) I have to say I doubt it.

It would be great if it did but even if it doesn't he'll sell a bunch of it.

diamondlarry -

What would be the recommended daily allowance :) ?

It's 50 to 200 mcg for adults :

https://www.springboard4health.com/no...ml#Recommended
It's $2 for 100 50 mcg pills :

https://www.drugstore.com/products/pr...lenium_dietary
https://a1468.g.akamai.net/f/1468/580...156966/200.jpg
Question : How do I translate the human directions into car directions?

More Serious Question : What would be the ratio of selenium to gasoline to achieve the PPM stated in the article? Let's assume for the moment that I went to a health food store and bought selenium that contained no other harmful substances (if it's good enough for me, it's good enough for my car, right?). How many pills would I add (that I ground up) for X gallons of gasoline?

CarloSW2

That is a very good question. The only thing I've been able to come up with is doing it by weight. I think I heard somewhere that gas weighs around 6.5 lbs/gallon?

You would need 20000 of those pills to get 100 ml's of pure selenium. Doesn't sound very cost effective.

repete86 -

(EDIT : repete86, I see where you got the 100 ml now, I thought you just used the number as an example. The 100 ml is the amount of 87 octane gasoline. The question I am trying to answer is, what is "1.5 ppm" of selenium needed for a gallon of gas? The pills in the example above have 50 mcg of selenium per pill. I should have used that as the basis for my calculations, not the 100 ml you site)

(EDIT #2 : The numbers below can't be right because the this is a difference between liquids and solids, I think :mad: )

(EDIT #3 : Ignore this post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

At 1.5 ppm, how many ml's of selenium do you need for one gallon of gas?

From here :
https://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm

I get :
100 milliliter = 0.026417205 gallon [US, liquid]

1 part per million = 1 / 1,000,000 = 0.000001 => 1 ppm

Sooooooo, => 0.026417205 gallon / 0.000001 = 26417.205 ppm

But, we only need 1.5 ppm, so let's solve as follows :

20000 pills will yield 26417.205 ppm
X pills will yield 1.5 ppm

The above are equivalent ratios, so I can solve for X as follows :

20000 / 26417.205 = X / 1.5 => X = ( 20000 / 26417.205) * 1.5 = 1.1356 => about 1.2 pills per gallon of gas.

Sooo, at $2 for 100 pills, the cost per pill is $.02 per pill.

Therefore, assuming all the numbers above are correct, the price per gallon where 1.2 pills per gallon are needed would be less than $.03 per gallon.

Can someone check my numbers?

CarloSW2

diamondlarry -

Here it says 6.3 lbs/gallon :

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml
So let's assume 6.3 pounds.

Now let's go here :

Pounds to Micrograms Conversion Calculator
https://www.unitconversion.org/weight...onversion.html

According to the above, 6.3 pounds [lb] = 2,857,631,931 micrograms [µg]

Now, 1.5 ppm = 1.5 / 1,000,000 = 0.0000015

Multiplying : 0.0000015 * 2,857,631,931 = 4286.44 micrograms per gallon :eek: !!!!!

Soooo, for the 50 mcg pills I stated initially, the number of pills would be :

4286.44 / 50 = 85 pills!!!!

At 100 pills per bottle at $2.00 per bottle, that would be 85% of the bottle, or $1.70 per gallon :( .

Question : Where do you get purified Selenium?

Reference :
Properties of Fuels
https://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/pdfs/fueltable.pdf

CarloSW2

Bummer!:( Another thing I noticed in the link was that they used something called Dimethylselenide. Apparently it's some form of selenium. I wonder if that would significantly icrease/decrease the cost?

EDIT: I came up with 4230 micro-grams based on 87 octane gas weighing 6.216 lbs/gallon.(Premium fuel weighs ~6.350lbs/gal.)https://www.faqs.org/qa/qa-21281.html I found selenium tablets here-https://www.iherb.com/store/ProductDetails.aspx?c=Herbs&pid=HOG-15091-for $3.74 for 180 tablets@200 micro-grams each. Based on that, I come up with slightly under $.22 to treat my Saturn's 12.2 gallon tank. Please check my figures since it's nearly 12:30 am here and I should be in bed by now. :p

Selenium in tablets is going to be a compound to increase bioavailability (in the
same way that 'Iron' tablets actually contain Ferrous Sulphate - Iron couldn't
be absorbed by the body.

Sort of makes you realize how little you are getting in a pill for that price.

The article mentions that they used Dimethylselenide(sp?). Anyone know where I can find some. A drawback is that I think it's fairly toxic.:thumbdown:

diamondlarry -

Maybe for the purpose of an experiment you could use liquid selenium :

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000F9Y14C/...C&linkCode=asn

However, the concentration may be to low to be useful because you would probably have to pour so much into the tank that the gas would be watered down :( .

Question : Do you think you could evaporate the liquid and end up with a higher concentration of selenium? Any chemists out there?

CarloSW2

Selenium is used most commonly to make steel a color of blue. Any gun bluing kit contains a lot more selenium than pills. Still, this is selenium dioxide, not dimethyl selenium.

This product smells like bull**** to me.