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Company pushes pump to reduce emissions

By DAVID SCHWARTZ

Special to The Business Journal

It's the size of a Sony Walkman. But a Massachusetts-based company is claiming its product does big things.Like generating huge results when it comes to drastically reducing vehicle emissions and saving Motorists thousands of dollars at the gas pump during the lifetime of their vehicles.All it takes is a little platinum in the engine, according to National Fuel Saver Corp. officials."There's no doubt that this works," said Carl Maddox Ragland, who runs the company's sales Operation out of a Scottsdale office. "That was proven a long time ago.

The results are in."Now, company officials are trying to get the word out about the small plastic device that puts platinum in a vehicle's engine and allegedly helps fuel bum better. Officials said it not only makes it environmentally sensitive but translates to fuel savings that average 22 percent.

The company recently launched a national marketing campaign in hopes of pumping a life into a product that has been around for more than a decade but still is not widely used by companies or individuals across the nation. To date, 350,000 such devices have been sold. "We're trying to bring a sense of awareness to people that our product is out there and available and it is all that we say it is," said Robert Smith, a marketing consultant hired in November to push the product. "That's the main goal right now. It's an education process."

The process starts with a brief history lesson on the company and the product that was developed by Joel Robinson in the mid-1970s. It first became available in the marketplace in 1979.

The device - a small plastic container with a platinum solution inside - first must be connected to a vacuum line inside the vehicle's engine compartment. That reportedly takes about 15 minutes.

Once there, it goes to work by injecting tiny amounts of platinum in vapor form into the gas-air mixture to bum the fuel more completely in the engine. It operates in the same way that platinum in the catalytic converter causes the unburned fuel leaving the engine to bum inside the converter.

Its makers claim the process allows the mixture to bum better, allowing for 90 per cent of the fuel to be burned inside the engine. That compares with the 68 percent that currently is burned with the normal catalytic converter, company officials said.

It supposedly takes three to four tank full's before it begins to make a difference. Company officials said the product, which retails for $149, must be replaced every 30,000 miles.

The product is manufactured in the Boston area, with the company's research and development headquarters in Joplin, Mo. Sales are in Scottsdale. Ragland claims getting the fuel-saving product into the marketplace has been a struggle because of pressure put on by oil companies that opposed anything that would reduce consumption. He said the oil interests unsuccessfully attempted to buy the patent from Robinson.

Additionally, he said National Fuel Saver faced a lawsuit by the federal government in the 1980s, an action brought by the U.S. Consumer Protection Agency that claimed the company's assertions about the product were fraudulent and untrue.

Ragland said a federal judge in Boston ruled in the company's favor after several years of court battles and upheld its stance that the device improved gas mileage. He said the judge ordered the agency to repay the company's $23,000 in legal fees. He said there are no other outstanding legal disputes involving the product.

Despite the resistance, Smith said the product has drawn interest across the country, including being used early on by the Concord School District in Massachusetts. School officials there reported a 20 percent increase in the mileage for its fleet of 26 buses and vehicles. Officials also have said the product was responsible for improved cold-weather engine starts on all the vehicles. Smith said he already has had interest in the product from small-engine manufacturers and several cities, including one in Arizona that he declined to identify. He said he expects to agree to a contract to start testing with the unnamed municipality within 30 days.

The company also has identified several other potentially lucrative markets - aviation, trucking and boating industries - that it intends to target in the next several months.