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Being an engineer and a long time amateur radio operator I have always liked seeing an interesting innovation used to fix a problem, whether the fix is temporary or permanent. I've used unorthodox fixes in both my vocation and avocation over the years. It's also fun seeing how others have dealt with solving problems with only the materials they had on hand.

That being said, I found a blog devoted entirely to showing interesting jury-rigged fixes to everyday problems.

(A big thanks to Eric the Viking)

This is a follow up to this post, specifically to the second half of the post.

A recap:

A laser source is received from a customer for repair, wrapped in a note that says "Toggle switch on top panel of unit is broken off. Can't turn on unit power."

The problem was immediately apparent to our faithful Repair Guy.

The toggle switch was indeed gone...because the unit in question never had one.

The power switch on the unit in question is on the front, a red circle with a vertical line in the center. The user's manual even shows a diagram of where the switch is located and what it looks like.

Today, our Repair Guy received an irate phone call from the same customer, demanding to know why his laser source wasn't repaired.

Our Repair Guy tried to explain to the customer why the unit didn't require repair, but the customer wasn't having it. So he asked the customer if he had the carrying case for the laser. When the customer answered that he did, the Repair Guy asked him to go into the case pocket and remove the piece of paper inside, then read it over the phone.

"The previous model DWLS2, discontinued over 7 years ago, did use a toggle switch on the top panel to turn on the power to the unit and select the laser wavelength."

"The present DWLS2 does not incorporate a toggle switch. Instead, there is a keypad on the front panel. The round red button on the lower left corner of the keypad is the power switch. Press and hold the button for 2 seconds until the indicator LEDs turn on. Press and hold the button again for 2 seconds to turn the unit off."

"For further information please Read The Fine Manual, enclosed."

Then the customer actually pushed the power button, turning on the laser...

...and then hung up his phone.

No "Thank you". No "Oops." No nothing, other than the sound of the call being disconnected. Our Repair Guy doesn't know if it was due to anger, embarrassment, or a fit of pique.

This incident proves that our Repair Guy understands our customers quite well and anticipates their needs, hence the piece of paper he included with the laser source when he shipped it back to the customer.

I would have posted this next Tuesday, but it was too good to wait until then. So I bring you two more tales from the files of Tech Support.

The first tale of tech support woe came to my attention earlier today when I received a request to look into a customer complaint about two red laser sources that apparently failed after the customer had used them for about a week. Two laser sources were being returned because there was no visible output even though both of the indicator LEDs were on...one of them being the Low Battery indicator.

This indicator lets the customer know the batteries need to be replaced. If the customer had actually read the instruction manual he would have known that when the Low Battery LED is on, the red laser is disabled. So the customer sent his two red laser sources all the way back to our factory from overseas to have the AA alkaline batteries changed.

The second tale is related to the first.

While talking to our Repair Guy about the first incident, he mentioned that it isn't all that unusual for him to receive units for repair that required only a change of batteries to set them to rights. For certain pieces of equipment about 25% of the returns required only new batteries to 'fix' them. Some of this equipment still had the original batteries shipped with them many years ago.

These two tales prove what we've known for a long time: Customers don't read the user manuals. And as long as this is true we will continue to see 'broken' units that aren't really broken and only need new batteries.

Over the past few years the functionality of cell phones has grown to the point that there are so many functions built in that they rival many home computers in regards to the types and numbers of software applications they can run. They can act as organizers, send and receive e-mail, surf the web, text message, take pictures, record video and audio, play music, play games, give turn by turn directions, and perform a host of other tasks. But one thing they don't always do so well is make phone calls, something customers want them to be able to do.

Over 1,300 survey respondents were asked the open ended question, "What features are desired on your next phone?" The top three responses were better connectivity, better audio and simplicity.

In many cases vendors have been so focused on making complex camera phones, music phones or mobile Internet devices, they have lost sight of the fact that phone functionality is mediocre at best. How often have we seen someone with a finger in one ear and a cellphone pressed to the other ear, desperately trying to hear a conversation? Our survey responses suggest that there is an opportunity for vendors to develop phones with great audio quality, robust connectivity and antenna features that are simply easy to use.

I know there are times when I am not pleased with the quality of the connection and audio on my cell phone. It isn't a problem with drop outs that I find the most vexing, but the poor quality of the transmit and receive audio. It would be nice to have what is called toll-quality audio when I'm using my cell phone rather than the variable and consistently poor quality I deal with now.

It is laudable when individuals or businesses deploy alternative energy generation systems, be they small or large. It's great...as long as they work.

In Minnesota, the Minnesota Municipal Power Authority erected 11 wind turbines in a number of cities around Minneapolis/St. Paul this past fall. The plan was to have all of them up and running by Christmas. The turbines were refurbished units originally used at a California wind farm. After reconditioning they were shipped from California to Minnesota and erected.

In southern California it's warm, even in winter. In Minnesota, it's cold from late fall through spring. In fact it's more than just cold, it's freakin' cold. Apparently the folks in California weren't aware of this fact.

The turbines sit idly in Anoka, North St. Paul, Chaska, Shakopee, Buffalo and six other cities, all members of the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (MMPA). The refurbished, 115-foot towers had operated on a California wind farm, where they didn't have to worry about cold hydraulic fluid turning to gel and oil lubricants getting too sluggish.

Fluids and lubricants that worked well in California didn't work at all in below freezing temperatures, gumming up the works and bringing the turbines to a halt until spring. That turned them into expensive monuments to facts overlooked.

Oops.

First it was wired microphones planted in rooms to listen to what the occupants were saying. Then it was radio bugs or shotgun mikes to eavesdrop on conversations. After that it was a laser beam aimed at a window record the vibrations of the glass caused by people inside of a room talking.

And now they use just the laser beam itself to listen to distant conversations. Such a system will be able to listen to your heart beating even from a distance.

Some technically savvy people know that light can be used as a tool for eavesdropping: if a beam from one arm of an optical interferometer is reflected off a window, the interferometer can sense sounds--including human voices--that make the window vibrate. But not only is it hard to separate voices from other sounds sensed by the interferometer; the setup must also be very precise, and in many cases there is no window conveniently nearby.

Researchers from Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel) and the Universitat de València (Burjassot, Spain) have developed a different way to sense sound remotely--one that doesn't rely on either an interferometer or a window. Instead, a single laser beam is shone on the object to be monitored (for example, a human or a cellphone) and the speckles that appear in an out-of-focus image of the object are tracked, producing information from which a spectrogram or temporal sound signal can be constructed.

Unlike the development system described in the article, future systems won't need to use a visible laser beam to perform their magic. Instead they will use an infrared laser, invisible to the eye (but not the camera).

Am I worried about the government listening in on my conversations? No. Well, maybe. Kinda. Oh, heck, yeah I am. But what concerns me even more is ordinary people listening in on their friends, neighbors, and adversaries. The phrase "out of earshot" could become meaningless.

I'm not sure I'm ready for anyone desiring to do so becoming privy to my private conversations. I doubt you are either.

But still, it's neat technology.

There have been plenty of times throughout our lives when we've done something we thought was a good idea that, in the end, had some unintended consequences. Sometimes those consequences have been good, sometimes neutral, and far too many times bad to varying degrees.

We see this all the time when it comes to laws, budgets (personal and public both), relationships, and a whole host of other areas too numerous to list.

And so it also happens with new energy saving technology.

I doubt anyone out there reading this hasn't seen the LED traffic signals that are seemingly ubiquitous these days. It makes sense for municipalities to use them in place of the old incandescent lights because they use a fraction of the electricity of the old lights. The LED traffic lights also last longer than the incandescent lights, meaning less maintenance is required because they don't need to be replaced very often. These two factors save towns and cities lots of money, both in energy and labor. But there's also a downside that didn't become apparent until this winter.

They don't produce enough heat to melt the snow which can block the traffic signal's red, yellow, and green lights.

"We had a snow storm here [in Utah] that got piled into some of the exterior traffic light shields.  These lights use LEDs. Not long ago, the traffic lights used 60-W incandescent lamps that gave off enough heat to melt any snow that blocked the colored lenses. I guess the LEDs just don't generate enough heat. An unintended consequence of using LEDs, at least in areas that get snow."

Oops.

About a year ago I wrote a rant about something that has always peeved me, that being the highly variable volume between within TV shows and between TV shows and commercials. The swing in volume can be dramatic and, far too often, demands constant attention to the volume which in turn requires us to keep the remote handy at all times.

You're watching a show you like, but at times the dialog has very low volume. You can barely hear a word anyone is saying. You turn up the volume on the TV so you can hear the dialog. Then a scene changes or a commercial break comes up and suddenly IT'S THIS LOUD!!

You scramble to turn the volume down to a dull roar. The action scene or commercial break ends and now you can't hear the dialog...again. It's a never ending cycle.

For me it's worse in the late evening when BeezleBub or Deb are trying to get to sleep. I have to stay right on top of the remote to chop back the volume every time it comes booming out of the speakers. It becomes tiresome.

I have a couple of questions for the various TV and cable networks: Why the hell do you jerks do this? Do you really think it makes your shows that much more watchable or your sponsor's commercials more likely to sell their product?

Let me clue you in - It doesn't. All it does is piss us off.

With the state of the art what it is when it comes to sound engineering you'd think the TV and movie folks would be able to keep the difference between the softest and loudest sounds a bit narrower than they do now (that's what's called dynamic range).

That battle has not ended, meaning we spend more time turning the volume up and down to keep it at a reasonable level than we do actually watching the show.

But now a solution to the problem may be at hand.

Loud commercials have always been an annoyance to TV viewers, but this is the first time a concerted industry effort has led to a positive outcome.

The work of the experts has been published as "ATSC Recommended Practice A/85: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television." You can download this document for free at www.atsc.org.

In concept, it's simple. Measure the loudness of a typical segment of dialogue in a program and assign that value as the dialnorm of the program. Measure the average loudness across an entire commercial and assign that as the dialnorm value of the commercial. When you insert the commercial (which is now a digital file) into the program, if the dialnorm value of the commercial is not equal to the dialnorm of the program, apply an overall gain correction to modify the commercial's dialnorm value to make it equal to that of the program.

In effect, that means that commercials will no longer be a lot louder than the TV shows the merchants are sponsoring, but only if the bill laying out these requirements, H.R 1084, actually passes in the House. If it passes we won't have to constantly adjust the volume to keep from going deaf!

I pondered about what to write tonight, but there were far too many things that would be great blog fodder for the sharp wit (OK, semi-dull wit) of yours truly. Well, not really. Frankly, I got nothing that prompts me to write anything worthwhile tonight. I really didn't want to have no entry at all, so I pondered even more. Then it came to me in a flash:

What would it be like if wireless phone technology didn't exist?

A stroke of genius, I must say. There's even a video to help you imagine just such a thing! (OK, I shamelessly stole it from Texas Instruments, but it does get the point across.)



So the next time you pick up your cell phone, Blackberry, or iPod, or fire up your 52" LCD HDTV, remember to thank an engineer. We may be socially inept and not all that great with members of the opposite sex, but we actually rule the world. You just don't know it yet.

No! Say it ain't so!!!

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, says that Linux is now becoming bloated, much like Windows.

Sometimes success has a down side.

One of the long standing arguments against the use of nuclear power has about what to do about the spent fuel, also called nuclear waste. For many years those against nuclear power have made the claim that the large amounts of waste were dangerous and there was no place safe to store it or sequester it for the time required to ensure it was safe. (Plutonium, one of the byproducts of fission, has a half-life of 25,000 years.) People argued the waste could be stolen by terrorists to make a nuclear weapon.

They were wrong.

The issue of nuclear waste is political, not technological.

First, we should look at exactly what is actually being argued about.

After fuel rods have spent a few years inside a nuclear reactor producing energy, they are removed from the reactor and placed in a cooling pool, held there until they have cooled to the point where they can be removed and placed into storage casks. 'Spent' fuel rods have used only a moderate percentage of the recoverable energy in the fissionable fraction of uranium that makes up the fuel. Each fuel rod assembly contains two different isotopes of uranium: U₂₃₅, the fissionable isotope, and U₂₃₈ which is not fissionable. The amount of U₂₃₅ versus U₂₃₈ is about 3% to 97%, meaning U₂₃₅ makes up only 3% of the uranium in the assembly. After being used in the power reactor that ratio has changed, with the fraction of U₂₃₅ being smaller, as is also the case of the U₂₃₈. But now there's also a fraction of Pu₂₃₉, or plutonium, as well as a few other radioisotopes.

At this point the spent fuel is supposed to be stored away someplace 'safe' for the next 25,000 years, something that really isn't practical. But that's what we're supposed to be doing with it. At this point it's considered waste. But is it really?

So is this material "waste"? Absolutely not. Ninety-five percent of a spent fuel rod is plain old U-238, the nonfissionable variety that exists in granite tabletops, stone buildings and the coal burned in coal plants to generate electricity. Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust. It could be put right back in the ground where it came from.

Of the remaining 5% of a rod, one-fifth is fissionable U-235 -- which can be recycled as fuel. Another one-fifth is plutonium, also recyclable as fuel. Much of the remaining three-fifths has important uses as medical and industrial isotopes. Forty percent of all medical diagnostic procedures in this country now involve some form of radioactive isotope, and nuclear medicine is a $4 billion business. Unfortunately, we must import all our tracer material from Canada, because all of our isotopes have been headed for Yucca Mountain.

What remains after all this material has been extracted from spent fuel rods are some isotopes for which no important uses have yet been found, but which can be stored for future retrieval. France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains -- from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy -- beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.

So why aren't we doing likewise?

Politics.

We have the means to reprocess fuel, which in the process would reduce the total volume of spent fuel tremendously. Instead we put it in storage casks and in cooling pools because of a decision made back in 1975 by President Gerald Ford to stop fuel reprocessing. His executive order was issued because of the fear terrorist would steal the spent fuel and make a bomb. Ford's successor made the order permanent, which is surprising considering President Carter had been a nuclear engineer in the US Navy.

If anyone has ever seen how fuel is stored and how it's transported, those fears would be greatly reduced. Moving that stuff isn't easy, isn't fast, and would be very difficult to steal (and not because of the security but because of the sheer size of the transport casks). If terrorists want nuclear weapons it's easier for them get it from a renegade regime or buy it on the arms market. It's not likely they'd be able to process the fuel themselves in their garage or basement and turn it into weapons grade material.

When all is said and done, the amount of energy it's possible to generate using nuclear power is incredible, Wen one takes into account the total energy cycle, meaning the amount of carbon dioxide created for the planning, construction, commissioning, operation, and eventual decommissioning and dismantling of a nuclear power plant versus alternative energy sources, meaning solar and wind, nuclear is far greener. Nuclear power is such a dense energy source, generating far more electricity than any wind farm or solar farm while taking up a small fraction of the space of either of those alternatives.

Continued in Part III - Nuclear power and green energy 'sprawl'.

I read this piece in WSJ's Online Journal some time last week. I had to think about this one for a while because what it reported sounded true, but I had my doubts. I wanted to check things out for myself. A few days of asking questions as well as observing the interactions between members of the so-called "Generation-Y" proved to me the piece wasn't far off the mark. What am I talking about?

Their inability to read non-verbal clues from those around them. Such a deficit can lead to all kinds of social problems because they won't catch the subtle clues about how others are reacting to them in face-to-face social situations.

In September 2008, when Nielsen Mobile announced that teenagers with cellphones each sent and received, on average, 1,742 text messages a month, the number sounded high, but just a few months later Nielsen raised the tally to 2,272. A year earlier, the National School Boards Association estimated that middle- and high-school students devoted an average of nine hours to social networking each week. Add email, blogging, IM, tweets and other digital customs and you realize what kind of hurried, 24/7 communications system young people experience today.

Unfortunately, nearly all of their communication tools involve the exchange of written words alone. At least phones, cellular and otherwise, allow the transmission of tone of voice, pauses and the like. But even these clues are absent in the text-dependent world. Users insert smiley-faces into emails, but they don't see each others' actual faces. They read comments on Facebook, but they don't "read" each others' posture, hand gestures, eye movements, shifts in personal space and other nonverbal--and expressive--behaviors.

How many times have we seen teens sitting off to one side during a family social gathering, busily tapping away at the keypads of the cell phones, texting friends rather than interacting with people in the same room. It isn't necessarily that the teens are being rude. Instead it's because they really don't know how to interact without that electronic crutch as an interface, be it a cell phone, computer, or Blackberry.

So far my son has been able to avoid the 'need' for such an electronic crutch. For him a cell phone is nothing more than something you use to make a phone call. Beyond that it has no allure for him at all. While he does chat occasionally with friends on Facebook, he's rarely at it for more than a few minutes before he returns to what he was doing before the chat window opened. He much prefers to talk with his friends face to face.

So do I.

Oh, yeah! I gotta get me one of these!!



It may be satire, but somehow I think it's too close to the truth of what will happen to the US auto industry.

(H/T Instapundit)

First, it's the communicator, capable of contacting anyone anywhere on the planet, translated into the Motorola StarTAC Flip Phone cell phone. Then it's the medical diagnostic bed in the form of CAT, MRI, and PET scanners. After that it's high energy lasers capable of destroying missiles and artillery shells in flight or performing surgery with little or no bleeding. Then it's the transporter, even if it's only capable of teleporting a photon from one side of a lab to another. There are even cloaking devices and Bird of Prey stealth aircraft.

Many of the technological wonders of Star Trek have become reality, even if not quite in the form many might have liked. So what's next?

How about the Warp Drive?

If you think it's nothing but something from a science fiction movie, think again.

With the latest installment of the Star Trek franchise packing theaters, researchers are again speculating about the feasibility of building a faster-than-light "warp drive" similar to the one powering Star Trek's "Enterprise" star ship.

Researchers at Baylor University (Waco, Texas) claim that dark energy--the force causing the universe to expand--could power a warp drive by expanding the fabric of space behind the ship while simultaneously contracting space ahead of it. The scheme could theoretically enable a ship to traverse light years in distance without violating Einstein's prohibition on faster-than-light travel.

This space-warping mechanism for faster-than-light travel (without actually exceeding the speed of light) was first proposed in 1994 by the Mexican physicist Miguel Alcubierre. At that time, there was no known mechanism to explain how the effect could be realized. Thanks to string theory, the Baylor scientists claim that dark energy could theoretically be harnessed to realize a warp drive.

To quote Glenn Reynolds (and no pun intended). "Faster, please."

First Pons and Fleischmann announce cold fusion back in 1989, but no one can recreate their results.

Now in 2009 U.S. Navy researchers say Pons and Fleischmann were right. The problem, according to those Navy researchers, was that no one had the right instrumentation to accurately measure neutrons released by the cold fusion reaction.

U.S. Navy researchers claimed to have experimentally confirmed cold fusion in a presentation at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting.

"We have compelling evidence that fusion reactions are occurring" at room temperature, said Pamela Mosier-Boss, a scientist with the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (San Diego). The results are "the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons from low-energy nuclear reactions," she added.

...the Naval researchers claim that the problem was instrumentation, which was not up to the task of detecting such small numbers of neutrons. To sense such small quantities, Mosier-Boss used a special plastic detector called CR-39. Using co-deposition with nickel and gold wire electrodes, which were inserted into a mixture of palladium chloride and deuterium, the detector was able to capture and track the high-energy neutrons.

In case you're wondering what CR-39 is, it's no special super-secret formulation. It's quite common. In fact, if you wear glasses made with plastic lenses, those lenses are likely made from CR-39.

Who knew your eyeglasses would make such great neutron detectors?

If this breakthrough proves true, and so far a number of other groups have provided evidence of cold fusion, yet another path to cheap and plentiful power could be just around the corner.

One of the other fusion projects showing great promise is polywell fusion, a project started by the late Robert Bussard. Bussard's program has continued past his death, with some researchers from Los Alamos taking a leave of absence to continue Bussard's work at Emc2 Fusion Development Corporation.

You know just about every teenage boy and geek worthy of the name is going to want one of these.

This may be dating me and showing what a total electronics geek I am by revealing this, but there are more than a few pieces of Heathkit electronics kits I bought and built when I was in my teens and twenties.

While very few of the younger electronics enthusiasts have likely ever heard of Heathkit, they were a staple of a lot of do-it-yourself fans for almost 60 years. For years ham radio operators bought and built all kinds of Heathkit test equipment (VTVMs, oscilloscopes, signal generators, RF power/SWR meters, LCR meters, grid-dip meters, frequency counters), receivers, transmitters , transceivers (the HW-101 - a multiband HF SSB rig affectionately known as the Hot Watter 101, was the most popular and best selling HF transceiver ever; the HM-2036 - a 2 meter synthesized FM mobile rig, was another popular kit), linear amplifiers (SB-200/201, SB-220/221), and a wide range of power supplies. It was a less expensive way to get new equipment while also having fun building our gear. It also opened up the possibilities of expanding the capabilities of our gear with our own modifications or additions.

Non-hams built TV sets (even color TV sets as early as the late 1960's), stereo receivers/amplifiers, and a host of other electronic doodads that kept them busy in their basements or on their dining room tables as they assembled their kits.

Even though it's been nearly 20 years since Heathkit stopped selling kits to enthusiasts, there are thousands of pieces of Heathkit equipment out there still in use, their familiar green crinkle-finished cases and silk-screened front panels still seen in ham shacks and on electronics workbenches all over North America.

I built more than a few SB-200 and SB-220 amplifiers, helped a friend build his HW-101, and I refurbished/rebuilt more than a few HW-101's and SB-102's, as I did a large number of HW-18's (a crystal controlled 4-channel, 4MHz SSB transceiver used exclusively by the Civil Air Patrol for HF communications until about 2001).

There was a Heathkit store not too far from where I lived during my high school years and it was impossible not to stop in whenever I was near to ogle the variety of kits available. A lot of my spare change over the years went to buying kits from Heathkit.

There will always be fond memories of Heathkit and the wonder and joy it brought to a wide number of fledgling electrical engineers over the years.

It was while watching TV last night that I finally came to my breaking point. I've had enough. I'm pissed off and I don't care who knows it.

What am I talking about?

It's not politics. It's not the economy. It's not reality TV or the other really crappy shows airing these days.

It's volume.

You know what I mean.

You're watching a show you like, but at times the dialog has very low volume. You can barely hear a word anyone is saying. You turn up the volume on the TV so you can hear the dialog. Then a scene changes or a commercial break comes up and suddenly IT'S THIS LOUD!!

You scramble to turn the volume down to a dull roar. The action scene or commercial break ends and now you can't hear the dialog...again. It's a never ending cycle.

For me it's worse in the late evening when BeezleBub or Deb are trying to get to sleep. I have to stay right on top of the remote to chop back the volume every time it comes booming out of the speakers. It becomes tiresome.

I have a couple of questions for the various TV and cable networks: Why the hell do you jerks do this? Do you really think it makes your shows that much more watchable or your sponsor's commercials more likely to sell their product?

Let me clue you in - It doesn't. All it does is piss us off.

With the state of the art what it is when it comes to sound engineering you'd think the TV and movie folks would be able to keep the difference between the softest and loudest sounds a bit narrower than they do now (that's what's called dynamic range). Going from barely discernible whispers to the ear-splitting peals of thunder or booms and rumbles of high explosives and weapons fire in a matter of seconds is not winning you any fans in this household. The wide range of the background music doesn't help all that much either. While the music itself helps amplify the scenes on the screen, it too gets too damn loud at times, spoiling our enjoyment of what we're watching.

Get a clue. While the home theater systems those of us watching your programs are capable of a wide range of volume, it isn't necessary to exercise that wide dynamic range all the time.

If the claims of Oregon-based Vapor Fuel Technologies are true, they may have found a way to increase the fuel economy of the gas internal combustion engine by a third while maintaining its power output and lowering its tailpipe emissions.

Vapor Fuel Technologies (Beavercreek, Ore.) claims it accomplishes this by vaporizing fuel and mixing it with super-hot air, enabling modified electronic control circuitry to coax the same horsepower out of engines while burning less fuel and cutting emissions.

Being able to vaporize the fuel of a gasoline engine means the engine can extract more energy form the fuel than today's fuel injected engines. Even the best fuel injection engine doesn't burn the gas in its cylinders completely because the atomized fuel is still in droplet form (in a very fine mist), leaving the fuel in the center of the droplet only partially consumed. It exits the cylinder during the exhaust stroke before it can burn completely, wasting energy. The remaining fuel burns in the exhaust manifold, exhaust pipe, or in the catalytic converter.

By vaporizing the gasoline, complete combustion takes place within the cylinder, extracting more energy from the fuel and boosting power and economy.

If this works as advertised, the fuel economy of autos, trucks, and SUVs could be boosted without a major redesign of their engines. It would also greatly increase the economy of hybrid vehicles as well.

I've seen engines like this before, using the proverbial "100 mpg carburetor", but the imprecise control and feedback mechanisms made them impractical and more often than not, very expensive. They also decreased the life of the engines they were used with, burning out valves and piston rings due to the much higher combustion temps the old systems caused and damaging pistons because of the tendency of these systems to suffer from detonation due to the lean fuel/air mixtures created by the systems.

If I recall correctly, Smokey Yunick tried out a number of these fuel vaporization schemes back in the 70's and 80's and every one worked...for a few hundred or thousand miles before the engines self-destructed.

Hopefully the system created by Vapor Fuel Technologies will fare better.

I'm surprised no one thought of this earlier: cars that have different electronically tagged keys that limit the top speed a car will travel when a teen is behind the wheel.