Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1920-11-06
GASOLINE WASTE

ihioaSoil ChiiStdotiFC the United States Bureau of Mines has demonstrated the startling fact
 that owing to improper carburetor adjustment on automobiles and trucks there is a waste of twenty-five to thirty per cent of gasoline. In other words, with proper adjustment, cars will run twenty-five to thirty per cent more miles to gallon of gaso- line, thus reducing operating ex- penses, and, far more important, con serving gasoline.
 Last year the state authorities of New Jersey enlisted the services of the Bureau of Mines to solve the ven tilation problem of proposed tunnel under the Hudson River to connect New Jersey and New York and to be 5000 feet from portal to portal. I'm properly burned gasoline gives off vapor, colorless, tasteless, odorless and very deadly, called carbon mon oxide. The New Jersey tunnel is to be used by motor-cars and the engi- neers needed to know how much car bon monoxide was given off by auto mobile exhausts in order to determine how much fresh air to introduce into the tunnel for the purpose of protect ing human life. No data were avail able, and the Bureau of Mines started experiments. These have now been completed and results have been re- vealed by Dr. A. c. Fieldner, super vising chemist of the Experiment Sta tion of the Bureau of Mines, at Pitts burgh, in a recent report.
 The investigators borrowed a num- Der of automobiles and trucks for the experiment. An accurately gradu- ated tube containing gasoline was at tached to the carburetor. A device was attached to the exhaust to catch samples of exhaust gas. Cars were run measured mile at various speeds, and samples of gas were talk en with engine idling, racing and ac- celerating, the engine being put through all phases likely to be en- countered in traffic. The samples of exnduSt gases ODIdlHcu "CIC SuDJSSI- ed to careful analysis.
 Of the. results of the experiments Dr. Fieldner says:
 "No change in carburetor adjust ment was made as our object was to obtain information based on actual operating conditions, and not the ideal conditions of careful adjustment under which the usual tests of the automotive engineer are made.
 "For this reason, surprising and, from the point of view of conserva- ton, most disquieting results were obtained. The average automobile owner and truck operator is wasting from 20 to 30 per cent of his gaso- line by using too rich mixture. Pre- liminary tests on 70 representative cars and trucks show an average of from 6 to per cent of carbon mon- oxide and 2 to 9 per cent carbon dlox- idle in the exhaust gas. The tenden- cy towards rich mixtures was very much greater than towards lean mix lures. This is to be expected, as motor will operate smoothly and ac- celerate rapidly with carburetor ad- justment on the rich side, whereas on the lean side smooth operation does not come until the motor reaches its full operating temperature and is run ming at fair speed. However, the gas excess is much greater than nec- essary for good operation in the great majority of the machines tested.
 Many passenger cars and trucks showed as high as 10 per cent carbon monoxide in the exhaust. It is safe to say that 25 to 30 per cent greater mileage could be obtained on the av- craze of all cars tested with little attention to the carburetor adjust ment. In the aggregate this would represent an annual saving of from 25 to 30 per cent of the gasoline em- ployed in this country for motor Ve- hicles, no small figure when We con sider that there are now in use r.
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