Pittsburgh Power Max Fuel

Here are my concerns with their description.

They say it can improve combustion. The only thing that can improve combustion in a diesel engine is higher compression, like replacing your o-rings and pistons.

It claims it increases the heat which increases the burn rate, which has been proven to be false. Study of burning rate and nature of combustion in diesel engines - ScienceDirect

They claim that you will consume less DEF because there will be less soot. That makes no sense because DEF is injected at a set dosing rate of fuel consumed. It has nothing to do with the level of soot.

And the whole function of a DPF is to burn soot. The doser injector sprays fuel through your turbo which washes all of the soot from your manifolds down to your DPF filter and the sprayed diesel ignites burning the soot. This is why your exhaust gets so hot. This claiming it burns soot cleaning the DPF filter makes absolutely no sense to me.

 

EGR makes soot. Higher EGR duty cycle = more soot. More EGR also means less NOx. NOx is created by high combustion temperatures.

EGR was done to cool the combustion temperatures down so less NOx would be created. EGR has less available oxygen to support combustion.

When you look at it that way, higher combustion temperatures make less soot but more NOx. If there's more NOx, would you not need MORE diesel exhaust fluid to reduce the NOx levels?

 

@Misesian may have looked into it,I know he mentioned some other treatment in his thread.

 

They don't claim that it improves combustion. They claim it improves thermal efficiency (whatever that is), during the combustion stroke.

They also claim that it lowers the temperature at which soot is burned during exhaust, so more soot is burned instead of getting trapped in the DPF.

It also has an injector cleaner.

I've met one, (yeah I know, a whole grand total of one), guy that runs it in his truck, and he swears by it.

 

Maybe he was referring to the 7th injector?

 

Who knows. It's only $220 for a gallon and says to use a ounce every 25 gallons. That's only $0.07 a gallon.

It would have to save me money to buy it, so I'd be looking at something like at least $0.10 a gallon in savings to continue buying it, and I don't see that happening.

 

Don't know about trucks and I realize this is apples to oranges but many of the small, non-road diesel engines dose the DPF by firing the engine injectors during the exhaust stroke.