Quote:
Originally Posted by kknudson
While I am strongly against Ethanol as a fuel here in the US, at least the Corn based that is/was the rage.
I thought that the addition of Ethanol as an additive IS beneficial to most vehicles, those not affected by rotting of rubber parts.
The ethanol is used to take some of the place of lead and PBE(?) that were both found to be very harmful too the environment. It though it helped prevent knock type problems.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that was my understanding.
The current EPA increase proposed does not make sense though, except to support the Ethanol industry. Which our fantastic forward thinking  government threw billions of dollars at with little to show.
Although our politicians did do well with the huge campaign contributions from the ethanol industry. So I guess some good came out of it  . |
Ethanol is added to conform to laws requiring an oxygenated reformulated fuel for lower emissions on start up, not to increase octane rating.
The addition of ethanol will increase the octane rating if nothing else is done to the additive package. Refiners will modify the additive package by reducing the normal octane improving additives when ethanol is added so the resulting reformulation has -theoretically- the same octane value.