Problems with Shell gas?
Post Fiend
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 5,228
Likes: 5
From: Running Springs CA
10 percent ethanol and maybe 1-2 percent additives still leaves 88-89 percent gasoline. As it is, the modern refinery is designed to create gasoline from every by-product possible.
Jim
Post Fiend
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 8,521
Likes: 16
From: Lost
Record high gas/diesel prices, and record high oil company profits. Must be a connection there somewhere, but darned if I can figger it out........
I wish the feds would quit trying to force corn based ethanol on us. The cost of producing corm based ethanol is higher than the cost of gasoline, so the feds pay a subsidy to keep it artificially lower than gas. Sugar based ethanol, on the other hand, is far cheaper to produce........
Postmaster
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 3,940
Likes: 8
From: Southern Oregon Coast
OK, but do you remember when gas was actually brownish/reddish in color instead of clear? It looks like lightly-tinted water now... I still say there's something fishy going on there... Or are they somehow filtering gasoline to make it look that way?
FTE Leadership Emeritus
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 7,298
Likes: 45
From: Southern California
It's been a long time since I worked in a fuel refinery. But we were putting MTBE in premium unleaded a long time ago. It was used as an octane booster. MTBE was 125 octane. But the way it was used was to blend it into the feedstock going into the furnace and reactors to make the gasoline blend stock (reformate.) Along with the main ingredient, desulfurized naptha, a little butane and a whole lot of hydrogen.
We never used any ethanol, so I don't know for sure or not if it is blended into the feedstock the same way as MTBE or blended with the reformate product. With the affinity for water that ethanol fuels have, I'm thinking maybe the latter.
Postmaster
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 3,940
Likes: 8
From: Southern Oregon Coast
Huh, ok... I wasn't aware that dyes were ever used in gasoline - thanks for clearing that up for me...
Seems like I remember reading somewhere that MTBE cause damage to rubber fuel lines - or something like that...
Seems like I remember reading somewhere that MTBE cause damage to rubber fuel lines - or something like that...
FTE Leadership Emeritus
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 7,298
Likes: 45
From: Southern California
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Hotshot
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 18,488
Likes: 22
From: The Big, Oregon
MTBE contaminated a bunch of water supplies, I remember one of my teachers in Maine had to stop using their well water and some company had to supply them with bottled drinking water.
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FTE Leadership Emeritus
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 7,298
Likes: 45
From: Southern California
Yes. Due to all the leaking gasoline station tanks, MTBE turned into a huge environmental disaster. I have to wonder though, if MTBE was blended into the process before or after reforming the feedstock. Perhaps it does not matter. But I have to think that any alcohol or either products blended into the reformate feedstock before hydrogen catalitic reforming would result in a product that is not miscible with water.
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