Ethanol in the gasoline

Yeah, we started way back in the late 80's too but we run the Ethanol in the winter only. Plus the company was giving away octane. Then someone in headquarters figured they could save money by just refining gasoline to a lower octane then use the Ethanol to bring it into spec's. That was a real pain. Then when the rack crashed you had some real figuring to do. They would ship only two grades of course ,regular and premium, but the regular was sub-grade octane and you had to add just the right amount to get the octane and 10% by volume. The premium was left alone. I don't know what they are doing now with the ethanol running all year long.

We had a lot of problems because we loaded from a common carrier tank farm. The problem was getting their computers to talk with ours through old broke down phone lines. Any bad storms that would come by and you's be hoping to get loaded without the rack crashing. Our system was designed by our own tech's and it cost in the millions but it did everything you'd want to run a terminal. As soon as a driver carded in the system would check the drivers driving license. med card, truck insurance, registration, bond if another company, if the dealer had the money for the load, if the driver was ok to load and not suspended, and all the accounting and inventory for our product. Anything you can think of that's required to haul gasoline was checked as soon as the driver entered his or her pin #,truck number, and the load number. But gets some lightning strikes around while you're loading any you're praying the whole thing does not go down.

 

Our area started with ethanol due to the dirty air and the county's failure to bring the air in under the clean air act. I believe you'll find just about all the places that use ethanol is because of the clean air act and in the beginning it was winter gas only. When the cities or area is in non-attainment I don't think you'll find any gasoline that doesn't have ethanol in it. I know the oil companies would much rather do away with ethanol and use another oxygenate because ethanol is a huge problem. As far as I know to date they still have not been able to blend it and ship through a pipeline.

There's another problem you might have noticed too and that's the power loss and the lower MPG. I would like them to find a better oxygenate that doesn't rob you of fuel mileage and destroy parts. Plus cleans the air too.

 

Down in the western southern states vapor pressure plays a big role. They want the gasoline to emit less vapors into the air when it's hot. Then you get each city and county involved what they want and it becomes a shippers nightmare. I know we had a load go into a station down in Laughlin NV once that came out of CA and was a better burning fuel plus it met CARB restrictions which were more than Clark Co. When Clark County Air Resource Board found out about that they made us pump the tank dry and flush all the lines clean and replace it it with the NV gasoline. Talk about people jumping up on their soap box and showing their power. It was a real waste of time and money for us but what can you do?

MTBE is much better for your car and for the industry. But just like you said it has some problems getting down into the groundwater. It migrated so fast that they found the MTBE in the groundwater only 6 months after they started using it. That's fast. So of course they had to dumped and go to ethanol which they hate because it's not their product. MTBE was a refined at the oil companies refineries. They do get a large tax brake for ethanol but the distribution can and is still is a big problem. I always use San Diego as an example. There you have no water access, no rail access, and only truck access. That's been some time ago so they may have put a dedicated pipeline in because that's the only answer. The last time I figure their need it was around a 100 trucks a day to keep the terminal going. That's very expensive. It's good talking to you too.