Originally Posted By: Shannow
Not your premise that oxygenates are vital, and the basis for the "MTBE" isn't that bad, as it only makes water undrinkable.
Not vital if you mean that they would retool and spend more money making higher octane fuels without oxygenates. Sure supply could be met by other means. But using oxygenates is a cheap and easy way to boost the octane rating of fuel compared to almost any other means, and almost a no brainer given that ethanol is currently cheaper than gasoline. Certainly all new vehicles certified for sale in the United States have been designed with E10 compatibility for at least the last 30 years, but that may not be the case in other countries. The 1989 Integra I drove clearly stated up to 10% ethanol, 15% MTBE, and 5% methanol (with corrosion inhibitors) was compatible with its fuel system. And certainly American fuel producers would just keep on using ethanol (or MTBE) even without any of the renewable mandates. It could change in the future though, but right now there's a highly competitive marketplace in the US where few people would pay a steep premium for ethanol free fuel.
Quote:
The Shocking Truth About America's Ethanol Law: It Doesn't Matter (For Now)
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016...-matter-for-now
I found two experts who've examined this question in great detail: Paul Niznik, an analyst at Stratas Advisors, an energy consulting business in Houston, and Scott Irwin, an economist who teaches at the University of Illinois. And here's their bottom line: If the law changed tomorrow and gasoline companies were free to ignore ethanol, they'd almost certainly keep right on blending ethanol into their fuel.
Got that? The ethanol mandate requires gasoline companies to do something that, at the moment, they'd do anyway.
The reason, in a word, is octane.
Octane is a measure of gasoline's tendency to ignite under pressure. If it's too low, the gasoline/air mixture in an engine's cylinders will burn too soon, creating damaging "knocking."
The industry standard for gasoline is 87. But getting gasoline's octane rating up to that standard costs money. It means more refining of the petroleum, or using high-octane compounds in your gasoline formula, such as — you guessed it — ethanol. So gasoline companies aren't using ethanol for its energy — they're buying it for its high octane rating.
There are other compounds that you can add to boost octane levels, but many, like alkylate or iso-octane, are generally more expensive than ethanol. Another additive that is widely used globally, called MTBE, has such a bad reputation for polluting the environment that many states have passed regulations that make it difficult to use.
"As of today, the alternative sources of octane are more expensive," says Irwin, who just updated his calculations on demand for ethanol last week.
Niznik, from Stratas Advisors, says that when corn prices hit a peak in 2012, because of a drought in the Midwest, there were bitter complaints about the ethanol mandate among farmers and people in the food industry who wanted that corn to be used for animal feed. "They were assuming that if we used less ethanol, the price of corn would go down," he says.
"The truth is," Niznik continues, "the [petroleum] refining folks knew in their hearts that if the [ethanol mandate] went away for a while, ethanol use wouldn't drop much. They were looking around at the octane replacements, and knew that those things were really expensive." Niznik says removing ethanol also would have forced gasoline companies to disrupt their refinery operations.
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According to Niznik, there may be some justification for that fear. "Refiners are looking strategically up the road," he says. "They're looking at forecasts of shrinking gasoline demand. They could say to themselves, 'Why should I be giving 10 percent away? I want to sell product that's mine!' "
Switching to petroleum-based octane boosters such as alkylate would not be easy, though. In the short term, Niznik says, it would be self-defeating. Oil companies are competing against each other to make cheap gas, and "the guy with ethanol is probably going to win."
But those other sources of octane are getting cheaper, Niznik says, and in the long run, they might be just as cheap as ethanol. In 10 years, he says, the business case for using ethanol could disappear.
And yes the primary reason why MTBE has been mostly phased out in the US is the affect on the taste of drinking water.