OT "No Ethanol"

Wouldn't the alcohol content have to be listed on the MSDS?

Here's the MSDS for Marathon's Recreational 90 fuel:

Interesting ... just another way for the government to screw us. In addition, after reading this thread one morning, that afternoon I heard an ad on the radio for TruFuel. Leave it to some entrepreneur to come up with a money maker. It has no alcohol and comes in pure gas, plus

Octane can be raised by the cracking and reformulaing of the feed stock without using lead, MTBE or ethanol - it's just more expensive. MMT is the current octane boosting additive of choice. There are also some non-metallic orgonochemical compounds.

March 23, 2014

A couple minutes ago, I was listening to the radio in the kitchen. The news voice said that the cost of gasoline in california was up, again. Because the cost of ethanol (which is used in making gasoline) is up. Well, did it occur to anyone to use LESS ethanol, and keep the price down? We did fine without ethanol gasoline for a lot of years.

Yep, if all the effort that went into ethanol production simply went into making cars more fuel efficient the problem would be solved.

I was at a new car dealership recently and amazed to see most of their vehicles got about the same MPG that cars got 30 years ago.

My company work pickup is getting less mpg than the previous ones. At least, that's according to the mpg calculator on the dash. I haven't actually computed the mileage so can't say for sure. I've been using 10% ethanol for years so that isn't affecting the comparison.

It takes some ammount of energy to move here to there. I'd have said to do more drilling, and issue more permits for refineries.

No. The one does not follow the other. Some fertilizers have always had certain micronutrients included, others have not. It has nothing to do with air scrubbers, it's a marketing decision, and that is based on what the product will be used for and where it will be used - and that is based on regional soil micronutrient and pH issues.

How many times do you have to be told that the issue isn't supply? For the past fews years we have been producing more fuel than we use. Since domestic demand is down and has been down for several years, the refineries are doing two things to maintain pricing: 1. shipping the surplus overseas; 2. periodically reducing production to reduce supply.

Again: the US is producing more fuel than it can use. As a matter of fact, the low level of consumption in the US is the factor behind the refineries' decision to add ethanol to even the (formerly) ethanol-free gasoline. It has to do with the Renewable Fuel Standard. That's a federal law that requires a set amount of ethanol be added to gasoline produced in a given year. At the time the law was written, it was (realistically) assumed that fuel consumption would increase year over year, so the law mandated an increase in ethanol to be added as well.

Except that fuel consumption in the US in the past several years has _decreased_, which the law did not anticipate. Thus, refiners are mandated to incorporate a set amount of ethanol into a diminishing supply of gasoline. They can't add more ethanol to the ethanol blended gas without running into labeling problems. So they decided to reduce the octane level of the ethanol-free gas and push the octane back up by adding ethanol to it, thus solving the problem of what to do with all that mandatory ethanol.

Believe it or not, the EPA sees this as a bad and stupid thing for everybody involved - the gov't, the refineries, and the customers. So the EPA has proposed a rule that would lower the mandated level of ethanol to be added to the nation's fuel supply to keep it in balance with current consumption. This would permit ethanol-free gasoline to remain ethanol free. So far, the only opposition to this proposed rule has come from the ethanol industry aka Big Agriculture. They're working on Congress to forbid the EPA from using common sense, because that would cost them money. Here they built all those ethanol production plants and demand isn't keeping up with supply. Boo-effin'-hoo.

And the government should butt out!

Stormin',

You mis the point. Government's idea of success is to grow and control. The worse things turn out for us, the better for them.

-T

Yes it does. Micronutrients added to fertilizer are almost always less tha n .5%. Adding 8% sulfur to a bag of 8-8-8 fertilizer does not make sulfur a "micronutrient".

A direct quote from the manager of the fertilizer plant: "Sulfur is a secondary plant nutrient that is required by all plants in fai rly large quantities. Plants get some sulfur from the air but with industri al plant emissions being reduced by EPA regulations not as much is availabl e through the air for plant uptake. To prevent a sulfur deficiency it is ad visable to add sulfur in fertilizer."

That quote from the horses mouth overrides your opinion.