Ask A Scientist© Chemistry Archive

name       Henry
status     other
age        60s

Question - Is there any merit to adding platinum as a gasoline additive?
------------------------------------------------
Any advantage that the addition of platinum to gasoline might afford
(perhaps as a catalyst to improve the ignition)could be realized less
expensively and with much less pollution to the environment by treating the
interior surfaces of the combustion chamber (cylinder walls, surface of
cylinder head, top of piston, spark plug electrodes) with suitable platinum
compounds. Bearing in mind that I've done no research in this area to know
how much such a catalyst might help, I don't think that any of the known
platinum compounds that would be soluble in gasoline would be worth the risk
of releasing to the environment as combustion by-products. Better fuel
economy or higher horsepower can be had with aftermarket cams and computer
chips, along with some miscellaneous tweaking under the hood, at much less
cost than a platinum retrofit or bottles of solubilized platinum. If you
have tried a "platinum additive", it probably contained an octane booster,
but no platinum.
Tim Spry
=========================================================