As always,,, just 'follow the money'................
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For a bit of history.
Originally back early on in engine development they knew they needed to boost octane. Alcohol was the main place they were going, but it was not working good. Then the lead came out to an outrage, back in the twenties there was environmental concerns because of the idea of putting lead in for the octane boost. In the end, the gas companies just started putting it in because the automakers wanted it so they could boost compression.
So you get rid of lead in the gas something needs to get put in to up the octane. Alcohol is the current cheap source so it works for them. It turns out it is not such a simple problem to solve.
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Kevin after 1975 when the last of the lead came out the refineries were still making high Octane fuel, did it for years with no alcohol. The alcohol thing is pure politics nothing else. When I worked at Deere's Harvester Wks. building combines, George Bush Jr. showed up one day and gave a rousing talk to everybody on how JD was going to be pumping out more harvesting equip. than they could sell because of a deal the Fed cut with the giant ag corporations to make more Ethanol. This was probably around 2001 in the fall. And man did JD sell machines as fast as they could build them. Fast forward ten years and the bottom about dropped out. It's a cycle like everything else. Still a weak market.
My youngest daughter is a polymer research Chemist and has been in many meetings about Ethanol. She told me it is a big joke and all in her field admit it causes more pollution trying to make the stuff and transport it, than it saves, and they only get about a 1/10th of 1 percent return on energy involved in the making of Ethanol. And, it is too corrosive to send thru the pipeline structure SO they move it on Warren Buffet's railroads, the BNSF. Big money maker, for him. Ahh,,,, and it goes on and on!
There was no real concern over TetraEthly Lead in gasoline from it's introduction in about 1924, until the early 70's. Did they know it was bad? Of course BUT GM owned the patent rights to Lead for gasoline and was making a lot of money off it.
Same type of thing with R-12 Freon. It was okey-dokey until DuPont's patent rights expired, and then all of a sudden it was decided that R-12 was burning holes in the Ozone layer (who ever heard about an Oxzone layer until the big scare?) and DuPont patents (drum roll here) R-24 and all is right with the world. For now that will eventually change!
Enough said you get the picture!!!
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If they really wanted they could use actual octane to give a boost; that is where the rating comes fromComment
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Speaking of "follow the money", a friend of mine inherited the farm, then never did any more work. He got rich by getting paid for NOT planting crops.
I think there are more workers than jobs..........so I want to get paid for NOT working. LOLComment
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That is like my old foreman said he wanted to.Originally posted by Tom Wesenberg View Post
Buy a farm and tell the US Gov't he was going to raise rocks and sell them to Russia. Then the Government would pay him not to grow a crop.Comment
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