At present, most of our energy comes from liquid fuels. The viscosity plays a very important role in liquid fuel production, transportation, and conservation. Reducing the viscosity of crude oil is the key for oil extraction and its transportation from off-shore via deep water pipelines. Currently, the dominant method to reduce viscosity is to raise oil’s temperature, which does not only require much energy, but also impacts the environment. Based on the basic physics of viscosity, we proposed a new theory and developed a new technology, utilizing electrorheology to reduce the viscosity of liquid fuels. The method is energy-efficient, and the results are significant. When this technology is applied to crude oil, the suspended nanoscale paraffin particle, asphalt particles, and other particles are aggregated into streamline aggregates, leading to significant viscosity reduction of 30% - 50% or more. When the temperature is below 00C, the viscosity reduction can be as high as 75%. The new technology is fast, energy efficient, and environment friendly.
In addition, we have also applied electrorheology to reduce the viscosity of diesel fuel just before the fuel atomization. Much smaller fuel droplets are injected into the engine chamber. Since burning starts at the fuel droplet surface, with small fuel droplets, the fuel can mix with air much better, the combustion goes faster and cleaner, and the heat is released on time to push the piston to do work, making the combustion faster, more timely and efficient. Our technology improves the engine efficiency by about 20% at dynamometer tests and more than 12% on road tests.
While this technology continues to develop, our results clearly show that it is a game changer for energy production, transportation, and conservation.