100% Electric SUV From Phoenix Motorcars Recharges In 10 Minutes

That is the best argument for the amount that has been in gas for
years (in the Midwest). It also promotes complete combustion for
cleaner exhaust. Not sure how much is really required for those
purposes, though.

 

The effect is already being seen. The price of your corn flakes will
probably go unnoticed in your family budget, but to poor people south
of the border, it is a serious problem. After NAFTA went into effect,
Latin American corn farmers were driven out of business by subsidized,
large-scale US agribusiness. Sure, the tortillas were cheaper, but
the money left the community and everyone suffered. Now poor have
gotten poorer and the tortillas cost more than ever.

 

no its not. it's about reducing overall mpg's so the oilco's make more
money /and/ supporting giant agricos into the bargain.

 

so what? decent gasoline has sufficient octane properties too.

the brazilians don't think so, and they have a lot more experience than
us. they have serious respiratory illness down there caused by ethanol
combustion products.

mtbe only became used because a certain govenor's wife was on the board
of a certain oilco whose refinery process produced large amounts of this
otherwise unwanted product. it was a stroke of oilco genius to label
toxic waste as "oxygenate" and get it mandated as an additive through
the boardroom/bedroom connection.

 

Actually, we import a relatively small amount of oil from the middle
east. Most of our imports come from Venezuela, Canada and Mexico.

JT

 

Most people fail to pick up on the fact that no matter who produces
ethanol, it still is big oil that gets to distribute and deliver it.

BOHICA!!!

JT

 

and that's /after/ we subsidize the agricos to produce it and subsidize
the oilcos to use it!

we are the sheep. we are simply here to be fleeced.

 

Most of the Canadian and South American oil is fuel oil. We get
quite a bit of our gasoline from oil from the MidEast.

 

No, sadly it doesn't. Pure gasoline (well, as pure as gasoline gets, which
isn't very pure) is much too prone to predetonation to use in a modern
engine.

For high performance reciprocating aircraft engines back in WWII, the
required octane rating was so high that even lead didn't do the job, and
they wound up mixing gasoline with very, very light distillates (casing
head). The stuff is a nightmare to work with, and evaporates much faster
than normal gasoline.

Sure, and we have plenty of lead problems.

Perhaps, but it works, and lead turned out to have long-term toxicity issues.
--scott

 

It sounds like you're saying that we're well rid of lead because of the
toxicity, but proud to have ethanol because of its toxicity.

 

yes it does. but oilcos want to be able to sell the crap mixed in with
the good stuff, so they need to mix in octane modifiers.

it depends on the content. see above.

ww2 aero engines are very different from modern auto engines. they had
very poor thermal control, poor combustion chamber design, poor mixture
control, etc. if design is bad, sure, you need to monkey with the fuel
content. but if the design is good and control is good, problem all but
disappears.

"works" relative to what? it's not the only oxygenate out there. and
it poisons the sub-surface water aquifers like nobody's business. and
is persistent.

lead salts are relatively stable and not very soluble.

 

Do you have a link for that? All I have is for crude and total petroleum,
although the crude from Canada is still more than total petroleum from Saudi
Arabia.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html
If that link wraps, it is also http://tinyurl.com/7ldt
It is amazing how little oil we get from the Middle East beyond Saudi
Arabia.

Mike

 

Look for a breakdown between "sweet light crude" and heavy crude oils.

We still get crude oil from Pennsylvania... but not a whole lot of it, and
it is very, very heavy. Still useful for making lubricating products and
some kinds of plastics, but it would take way too much cracking to be useful
as fuel.

This is mostly due to political concerns rather than technical ones. But
everybody likes the mideast oil because it is light and low sulfur so it
requires little processing to make fuels.
--scott

 

If you want to prevent a link from wrapping, just put angle braces
around it:

<http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html>

Jeff

 

I didn't know that! Thanks.