About the time of the article you reference, Shawn, I remember hearing a radio story in 'Life on Earth' about the tetraethyl lead vs. ethanol contest.  Kettering, the inventor of the self-starter, was involved for GM. The reporter or interviewee made one statement that still rings in my ears, "And after all this, we now know that, not only was lead bad for people, it was bad for cars, too. One reason car engines last so long now is..." I don't remember the exact words after that, but the point was lead damaged engines.  

About 10 years later I was at my wife's high school reunion, at dinner sitting across from a Ph. D. chemist who worked for a company that had made the tetraethyl lead.  I asked her to explain what the mechanism was whereby engines were attacked by it, if it were true. She said it was pretty common knowledge among her colleagues, and described the reactions, the interplay of water and breakdown products, the way chemists talk about things. Louis Hart  

-----Original Message-----
From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Upton, Shawn
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2014 1:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [TN] NTC - I believe ... (my credo)

Some time ago I did a bit of reading on it, probably found this link:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/01/how-did-lead-get-our-gasoline-anyway
Which I want to say lead to this reading:
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/secret-history-lead
But it was a while ago, and I can't find my notes, go figure.

In short, the need to boost octane goes back to the beginning.  And oddly enough, ethanol was a leading contender for that additive!  Yet lead won out, against its well-known health drawbacks.

The most interesting thing I got from that reading was the notion that, had big biz not won out, any and all pipelines would have been made from the get-go to handle the corrosive ethanol which otherwise is trucked.  Or at least that was my thought about the matter.  Might have had some portion of our fuel supply always renewable.  Or at the very least had avoided the lead debacle.  [Maybe not, hindsight isn't 20/20.]

Shawn Upton


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