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Old 27th September 2010, 12:03   #16
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Old 27th September 2010, 12:23   #17
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Unfortunately, we tend to be very gullible. South Africa due to apartheid bans developed the coal liquefaction technology and are today the world leaders, Germans in WW-II ran their cars on a coal fired gas generator. Necessity is the mother of invention.

I vaguely remember all the talk about 150mpg carburettors in my childhood (1950's, the average US then car did barely 10), with stories about these chaps blackmailing oil companies, blah-blah. So nothing changes!
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Old 27th September 2010, 12:40   #18
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Originally Posted by alpha1 View Post
Damn him then, its much easier and cheaper to use molasses to do the same.
If its that simple, then why isn't anyone experimenting with this? Why're the oil companies doing this? Atleast adulteration?

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I vaguely remember all the talk about 150mpg carburettors in my childhood (1950's, the average US then car did barely 10), with stories about these chaps blackmailing oil companies, blah-blah. So nothing changes!
This is quite interesting to hear; could you elaborate on this sir?

But my base question still remains unanswered. If his discovery/invention is fake, then why did few people torcher him to get the formula?

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Old 27th September 2010, 13:03   #19
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Rather than Testing this fuel in lab and find out whether its safe for automobile use, why agencies are asking how he invented and the formula for the same !.
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Old 27th September 2010, 14:14   #20
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Rather than Testing this fuel in lab and find out whether its safe for automobile use, why agencies are asking how he invented and the formula for the same !.
My point exactly Wildon.

See, I'm neither favouring Mr.Pillai nor opposing him. The Govt provided him a naive chance to test at IIT for which I'm sure the results would've been pre determined.

Like Gansan sir said, if his fuel was nick named to something & few others used them successfully, why not some agency test it rather than the need for the formula?

Coming back to the point on extracting fuels from plants, why is fuel from Jatropha not tasting success? My guess is with the oil companies (both Indian & International) do not want alternate fuels.
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Old 27th September 2010, 14:31   #21
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Originally Posted by aargee View Post
My point exactly Wildon.

Like Gansan sir said, if his fuel was nick named to something & few others used them successfully, why not some agency test it rather than the need for the formula?

Coming back to the point on extracting fuels from plants, why is fuel from Jatropha not tasting success? My guess is with the oil companies (both Indian & International) do not want alternate fuels.
The main ingredient in his "petrol" was benzene. It is proven as a carcinogenic. Sure, the fuel will be cheaper and the car will run - but don't expect it to meet BS emission norms or expect your engine to last it's normal life cycle. And if you peel away the layers of taxes and duties, even the petrol from your favorite bunk will cost only half of what it does today!

The LTTE had no choice, they had to burn whatever they could in their engines, and the environment be damned!

Bio diesel is a different ball game, it is genuine. But right now more expensive to produce than normal diesel. Hence it is used as a blend with normal diesel - I believe Indian Railways use a 10% blend. I think the only place it is compulsorily used 100% pure is in the Thames river boats.

There are no magic fuels, not for IC engines. At least, not yet!

Gasoline pill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily.../ina15002.html

Last edited by Gansan : 27th September 2010 at 14:34.
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Old 27th September 2010, 14:38   #22
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Originally Posted by aargee View Post
This is quite interesting to hear; could you elaborate on this sir?
I was about 10 years old so cannot remember too much. I heard my father mention many times that some chaps had modified their cars to get 150-200mpg and were making a bomb by blackmailing the oil industry.


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But my base question still remains unanswered. If his discovery/invention is fake, then why did few people torcher him to get the formula?
Greed. The crooks who tortured the fellow did not totally disbelieve his claims! I gess they thought if there is some truth, then they might as well extract the process from him, and otherwise who cares!
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Old 27th September 2010, 14:47   #23
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Jatropha has been proved to be economically not feasible. The Industry did show interest in this and there are people who still believe in its magic.
People develop alternate fuels without looking into the aspects about pollution and long term sustainability.

We have kerosene which is a cheap fuel. Can it be used? Some people have succeeded in processing waste oil from food production (ex oil used to fry). Can this be done on a macro scale, do we have enough waste oil?

I do not know what Mr Pillai has developed, but there are a lot of questions that need to be answered for developing a fuel which can be used in public.

Some raw materials could be considered cheap or free until they are supposed to be used in large quantities.
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Old 27th September 2010, 14:57   #24
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Sure, the fuel will be cheaper and the car will run - but don't expect it to meet BS emission norms or expect your engine to last it's normal life cycle.
Sir one moment; about 10+ years back we didn't have these stricter emission norms until WB supplied loan to us. So the Govt could've easily used them isn't it?

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And if you peel away the layers of taxes and duties, even the petrol from your favorite bunk will cost only half of what it does today!
More than true

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Originally Posted by sgiitk View Post
I was about 10 years old so cannot remember too much. I heard my father mention many times that some chaps had modified their cars to get 150-200mpg and were making a bomb by blackmailing the oil industry.
Looks like an interesting read. I'll try to read what I can find. But Tks for the info.

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Greed. The crooks who tortured the fellow did not totally disbelieve his claims! I gess they thought if there is some truth, then they might as well extract the process from him, and otherwise who cares!
My gut feeling is that, if Mr.Pillai would've given up to those crooks, the fuel would've been popular by now.
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Old 27th September 2010, 15:05   #25
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Sir one moment; about 10+ years back we didn't have these stricter emission norms until WB supplied loan to us. So the Govt could've easily used them isn't it?
The norms were in place and they were being tightened, just not known by the BS terminology. Two strokes were getting fitted with catalytic converters, remember?

But it was conclusively proved there was nothing "herbal" about his fuel and it was just an amalgam of industrial chemicals. Benzene and Naptha, mainly. That is what the crooks use to adulterate petrol, anyway. And this fellow wanted a patent for it!
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Old 27th September 2010, 15:13   #26
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The norms were in place and they were being tightened, just not known by the BS terminology. Two strokes were getting fitted with catalytic converters, remember?
Yes I remember very well & there was only one vehicle to come out with such feature, none other than Rx. But my point is, Pillai had come up with his fuel even before tightening, but still Govt couldn't encourage.

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And this fellow wanted a patent for it!
And there were even some morons who wanted to steal this "adultereated" stuff. What do you call that?
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Old 27th September 2010, 15:16   #27
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And there were even some morons who wanted to steal this "adultereated" stuff. What do you call that?
The gullible (or greedy) group included some prominent industrialists and even a former Chief Minister!
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Old 29th September 2010, 10:05   #28
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A lots of things are being covered in this thread.

Ramar Pillai's invention 10 years back was clear fraud as it violated law of conservation of mass ( and energey) the net mass of output was more then input and later it was discovered that the stirrer he used in his demonstration was a hollow pipe sealed with wax and it was filled with fuel.

In Late 19th century there was a flood of patents in USA which can be called perpetual motion machines and this flood was steammed once US Patent office came with a rule that no patent will be granted for Perpetual motion machines. To my surprise there are still people who came up with inventions which defy laws of Physics including one Indian settled in Australia named as Arindam ... who wrote a book as well and managed to publish some portions in Times of India.

Probably India was in same state in 1999-2000 when patent regimen was fairly new for Indian public.

If ramar pillai procures industrial chemicals from market whcih are known carcinogenics ( benzene) and banned as fuel and sell them to peole it is clear cut crime.

Bio-fuel is another ballgame , Biofuel is nothing new , i remember reading in news papers that first buses in Bangalore ran on distilled Spirit ( Ethanol) about 100 years ago but as cost of producing ethanol is much higher it's use faded away and miniral oil gained prominence.

Now with soaring oil price India is again using 5 - 10% blend of ethanol with petrol. The problem is that we can not simply produce enough ethanol without jeopardizing the food security.

One of the cause of soaring grain price is strategic shift of US to bio-fuel which is manufactured in US with Corn. Corn was used as feed to cattle and poultry . So Farmers shifted to other grains for cattle feed and thus grain prices shot up in genera. Similarly edible oil prices shot up once EU decided to promote bio-diesel , Palm and Soybean crops were diverted by South East Asian countries to fulfill European bio-Diesel demand.

In India Jatropa was considered a good alternative even Reliance invested a lot in Jatropa but the yield from Jatropa is not good enough to produce bio-diesel in enough quantity. Jatropa is a wild plant and not a crop with measurable and predictable yield , So may be agricultural scintists need to work for few more year/decades to develop varieties of Jatropa which can be planted as a cash crop.
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Old 1st October 2010, 00:12   #29
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If his original claims were true, the oil-cartel would have got him killed by now.
Thats true.

Have you read Rudolf Diesel's biography. He never died, he just disappeared. And its still considered a great mastery.
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Old 3rd October 2010, 09:00   #30
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Thats true.

Have you read Rudolf Diesel's biography. He never died, he just disappeared. And its still considered a great mastery.
did you mean to say "mystery"?

Wikipedia has this, so, while the motives/actual sequence of events are not known, Diesel did die. Rudolf Diesel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Much unlike the Australian former prime minister who vanished...Ooops,

Ramar Pillai would be a multi millionaire today, if there was any truth in his claims. He is just out there to hoodwink gullible people.

Last edited by kuttapan : 3rd October 2010 at 09:07.
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