[SOC] MTBE (was: Great News for Ontario Residents)

[Bob Nielsen]

Heck, I occasionally drink water with a few hundred thousand PPM of
ethanol!

I hate filling my tank with fuel that has MTBE, as the fumes always
give me a headache.

It's pretty obvious that Gray Davis didn't get any campaign
contributions from ADM!

Bob, N7XY
SOC #77

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 04:24:03PM -0800, JMcAulay wrote:
> 
> 
> Here in California, Our Amazing Governor decreed that we would keep on
> using MTBE (methylated tetra-butyl ether) as an oxidizer for at least
> another year, to avoid being at the mercy of "the ethanol cartel."  (I'm
> serious, he really said that.  Of course, before the November elections, he
> also said we had a state deficit which was manageably small.  He then said
> later (after he won re-election) oops, it's several times larger than he
> said previously -- on the order of thirty billion dollars.)   
> 
> Thrifty oil company is a California fuel company... they used to have one
> refinery (I think they still do) and many gasoline dispensing locations.
> Some years ago, their fuel was processed to include 10% ethanol.  Their
> product was actually cheaper than the stuff provided by most sellers in
> this state.  I began using it in my several-year-old Toyota and continued
> to use it for some years with no noticeable ill effects.  Almost every car
> nowadays has a sufficiently effective fuel-line filter so that any
> dissolved crud will not cause problems.  The energy from a volume of 90%
> petrol and 10% ethanol is marginally lower than from 100% petrol, but so
> what.  Carbon monoxide emissions are much lower.  By the way, using
> *methanol* as an additive is unwise, because methanol may damage some
> non-metallic fuel system components -- flex line, for example.
> 
> Meanwhile, MTBE -- alleged to be dangerous for human consumption in the
> parts-per-billion range -- is known to have contaminated enormous amounts
> of ground water, with this problem compounding daily.  Ethanol
> contamination in ground water would, of course, be safe at a thousand times
> that level.  Are we nuts, or what?  Oh, sorry, I forgot.  We Californians
> are cleverly avoiding being held hostage by "the ethanol cartel."
> Poisoned, maybe, but "the ethanol cartel" won't get us.  It's the sole
> thought that helps me sleep the night away.
> 
> 73
> John WA6QPL  SOC 263
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-- 
Bob Nielsen, N7XY                          n7xy@n7xy.net
Bainbridge Island, WA  
IOTA NA-065, USI WA-028S