July 9, 2008

Oil conspiracies don’t hold water

Construction Corner

Korky Koroluk

Today’s high fuel prices are being felt everywhere. Airlines are levying fuel surcharges, truckers are raising their rates because of fuel prices, farmers are hurting every time they refuel a tractor or plant a crop.

Construction uses a lot of fuel, and builders are caught from every direction: fuel for their own equipment, plus extra fuel costs associated with every truckload of aggregate or readymix, every delivery of steel or precast elements.

But there is some humour in all this, because it has brought the conspiracy theorists out in full force.

Did you know, for example, that there is said to be an effective way to use water to power your vehicles? The problem is that it’s being suppressed by the United States government, which is developing similar technology for its own use and wants to keep it out of everyone else’s hands.

There’s another problem of course: There is no such technology, no such conspiracy.

Still, if you are curious about using water as fuel, just Google it. You’ll get more than a million hits, but just keep your credit card in your pocket.

We now have a phenomenon called hypermiling. That’s where you use a whole set of little tricks to improve fuel mileage.

Some make sense: slow down a little, watch your tire inflations, stuff like that.

Others make no sense at all, like turning off your ignition and coasting down hills. Who ever dreamed that one up has never had a box full of crushed rock riding along behind him.

The concern over fuel prices is not new. Almost every time there is a sharp upward tick in prices, someone is sure to mention the Pogue carburetor, a miraculous invention that could give users anywhere up to 200 miles per gallon.

That tale has been around since the 1930s. I heard it in high school and it’s shown up on my computer screen perhaps half a dozen times in the last few days.

So where is this wondrous invention?

The problem, the story goes, is that a car manufacturing company bought all rights to the invention — then promptly buried it in the company vault, well away from the world’s view and even farther from market.

There is another problem: The story simply isn’t true, even though there are still web sites that present it as fact.

There was an inventor in Winnipeg named Charles Nelson Pogue, and between 1928 and 1935 he applied for a number of patents for what he called a new type of carburetor that he claimed completely vaporized gasoline before injecting it into the cylinders.

Fuel in this vaporized, dry state, he claimed, burned much more efficiently than fuel in the normal wet state—air laden with gasoline droplets.

A Winnipeg car dealer claimed to have driven a Pogue-equipped car 217 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Someone else claimed to have driven 26 miles on a pint.

Rumour followed rumour, but no reputable person was ever allowed even to see the miracle invention.

Engineers looked at sketches that had accompanied the patent applications and found nothing new.

Pogue was finally forced to put up or shut up.

He shut up.

Still, the story has legs, and keeps reappearing, but never with any proof.

One version has some mysterious strangers tinkering with Pogue’s car during the night.

After the tinkering, he never got the great mileage again.

Another version has all his papers being stolen during a break-in at his shop.

So it remains one of those stories that is nothing more than a story. But, the next time you pull up to the pumps, won’t you find yourself wishing your engine was equipped with a Pogue carburetor?

Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@journalofcommerce.com

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