Why are we still using ethanol?

[MossRoad]

Actually considerable money is spent here to keep tanks from leaking. They have to have sensors and all sorts of other considerations to have underground tanks. It's the old abandoned containers that cause the problems, often they are so old that people have forgotten they are even there.

At my old employer they purchased an old 3 story parking garage next door. Several years later, they tore it down and built a new building on the same spot. Several years after that, they were running fiber optic cables in from the street and hit something solid right next to the building. The couldn't figure out what it was. Well, rumor had it that the owner of the old parking garage, an auto dealership in the 40's and 50's, had purchased and buried a railroad tanker car right next to the parking garage entrance, and used it for fuel storage for the gas pumps at the dealership. Sure enough, the fiber guys started digging around and bang, bang, bang, they start hitting a metal lid, and yes, there it was, the top of a railroad tanker car buried in the middle of downtown.

We had to get Safety Clean to come in and pump what was left in the tank. Then another company came in and drilled holes in the bottom of the tank at each end and the middle and take soil samples from underneath the tank. Fortunately, the soil came back clean. Then they started bringing in cement trucks with a runny mix and started filling it in. I left after the 3rd full 10 yard truck didn't fill it! I think they said it took almost 5 truckloads to finish filling it.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^
They are lucky that it hadn't leaked. The (now defunct) store in town had tanks which leaked for years. They had a couple or 3 cleanups, the last time digging up an area across the road on somebody else's property. There was so much fuel in the ground that it caught fire from a spark when the excavator bucket hit a rock.

 

[def38]

Why not locate the MTBE in above ground storage and blend it with gasoline at the pump?

I shudder at some of the gas stations in remote, rural areas...their equipment is poorly maintained, nozzles leak, employees often smoke in the vicinity of the fuel vapors and their vapor recovery systems don't work.

One rarely sees a gas station installing new leak free underground storage tanks.

The politicians just took the easy way out...get rid of the MTBE, substitute ethanol and let those underground tanks continue to leak fuel without MTBE....what a government we have??!!

 

[MossRoad]

I can't remember exactly when, but at least 10 years or longer ago, it seemed almost every gas station in Indiana had to either replace their old underground storage tanks with new, or close the gas station. There are many around here that are closed because they couldn't afford to replace the tanks. If you look at abandoned gas station sites, many times you'll see a little fenced off area with a yard barn and an above ground tank or two. That's usually a cleanup system that's flushing the ground under the site and drawing up contaminants and storing them in the tank. You'll occasionally see a tanker truck pumping out the tank. You see this around industrial sites fairly often as well.

Another thing you'll see is that when they tear down a factory or assembly plant, they leave the concrete flooring in place. That's because the concrete floor is considered a cap over a known contaminated area. If they remove the concrete, rain and surface water will start flushing the contaminants into the ground water.

Here's an example. This is the old Bendix plant in South Bend, IN. Some of it is still in use by Honeywell and some local companies. Note the blank area towards the right middle that's been scraped clean of structures, but the concrete floor left in place.



Zoom in and this is what I'm talking about. Note that red dot in the middle of the concrete floor area.



That is a tank and a cleanup site.



You'll see these all over the country at industrial sites and gas stations.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Why not locate the MTBE in above ground storage and blend it with gasoline at the pump?

I shudder at some of the gas stations in remote, rural areas...their equipment is poorly maintained, nozzles leak, employees often smoke in the vicinity of the fuel vapors and their vapor recovery systems don't work.

One rarely sees a gas station installing new leak free underground storage tanks.

The politicians just took the easy way out...get rid of the MTBE, substitute ethanol and let those underground tanks continue to leak fuel without MTBE....what a government we have??!!

They replace gas tanks constantly here. Some stations have replaced theirs probably twice in 10 yrs.

 

[aczlan]

They replace gas tanks constantly here. Some stations have replaced theirs probably twice in 10 yrs.

Most of the stations around here that I drive past on my way to work have had their tanks replaced in the last 10 years or so.

Aaron Z

 

[JasperFrank]

The very mention of USTs, still sends chills up my back. I was the administrator of my grandfather's estate and he had lots of scattered rental properties. Darn near all of them had USTs for heating oil and/or another for kerosine. That was just the way, back in the 40's to 60's. I had records of what the renters paid for and some of those old records were heating oil deliveries. Even the property appraisers didn't find all of them till I looked over the properites and could find these USTs rather easily. Looked in the basement, saw old mounting points for an oil burner, then looked out side for the most realistic fill point, dug some, and sure enough.... another UST that had not been decommissioned. Anyone looking at property to buy has to be very aware of former uses. Cause Chain of Title can come back to haunt you. And if your are not careful it can ruin you financially.

 

[def38]

Our house had two 500 gallon heating oil tanks in the basement. The heating oil guy would lug his hose up to the side of the house, open the fill pipe and pump oil into those tanks. They never leaked and when it came tome to convert to natural gas (hooray...dad saved 100s$$ per year after that) and I now had lots more room in my little basement shop after the tanks were removed so I rebuilt the Rochester fuel injection unit for my 1963 Corvette Stingray coupe. Wish I still had that car. Today, it would be worth close to $1,000,000.00.

 

[Jstpssng]

I once had to dig out next to a foundation after the oil delivery man pumped >500 gallons of heating oil into a 275 gallon tank. Somehow he didn't figure out that the fill pipe going to the tank in the basement was broken, so he just kept on pumping. That was in 1985, as we were digging we were saying how easy it would be for them to install a bulkhead door to the cellar by the time we got done.

Every time I drive past there now, I still have to check out the bulkhead they installed after we got the hole dug.

 

[CADplans]

AND,, this is the news today,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Leah Douglas
Mon, February 14, 2022, 3:00 PM


By Leah Douglas
Feb 14 (Reuters) - Corn-based ethanol, which for years has been mixed in huge quantities into gasoline sold at U.S. pumps, is likely a much bigger contributor to global warming than straight gasoline, according to a study published Monday.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts previous research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) showing ethanol and other biofuels to be relatively green.
President Joe Biden's administration is reviewing policies on biofuels as part of a broader effort to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050 to fight climate change.
“Corn ethanol is not a climate-friendly fuel,” said Dr. Tyler Lark, assistant scientist at University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment and lead author of the study.
The research, which was funded in part by the National Wildlife Federation and U.S. Department of Energy, found that ethanol is likely at least 24% more carbon-intensive than gasoline due to emissions resulting from land use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion.
Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol trade lobby, called the study "completely fictional and erroneous," arguing the authors used "worst-case assumptions cherry-picked data."
Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a law enacted in 2005, the nation's oil refiners are required to mix some 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into the nation's gasoline annually. The policy was intended to reduce emissions, support farmers, and cut U.S. dependence on energy imports.
As a result of the mandate, corn cultivation grew 8.7% and expanded into 6.9 million additional acres of land between 2008 and 2016, the study found. That led to widespread changes in land use, including the tilling of cropland that would otherwise have been retired or enrolled in conservation programs and the planting of existing cropland with more corn, the study found.
Tilling fields releases carbon stored in soil, while other farming activities, like applying nitrogen fertilizers, also produce emissions.
A 2019 study https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17597269.2018.1546488 from the USDA, which has been broadly cited by the biofuel industry, found that ethanol’s carbon intensity was 39% lower than gasoline, in part because of carbon sequestration associated with planting new cropland.
But that research underestimated the emissions impact of land conversion, Lark said.
USDA did not respond to a request for comment.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the nation's biofuel policy, is considering changes to the program. Under the RFS, Congress set blending requirements through 2022, but not beyond, giving the EPA authority to impose reforms. EPA plans Explainer: What is at stake for the U.S. biofuel blending law in 2022 and beyond to propose 2023 requirements in May. (Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by David Gregorio)