Missouri Mandates Ethanol Jan 1st

[Methious]

Yes as of January 1st Missouri is a totally Ethanol State. It is not mandatory that they post a notice at the pump. Thus far I haven't seen any thing in the news about it and wouldn't know if my better half wasn't a book keeper for a local truck stop. As a result of the switch they have had to change the filters in the fuel tanks 4 times today alone. The Ethanol it seems is cleaning the tanks out, which might sound like a good idea except that when the filter goes bad a portion of the pollutants make it into your gas tank fouling your fuel line/fuel injectors. The company rep told them to stock up on fuel injector cleaner as they expect sales to increase for the first month until all the fuel tanks are cleaned by the alcohol derivative fuel.

Makes me more than a little mad that they just kind of slid this in with out making it impossible to miss the news. It's not that I'm against ethanol, I'm against not knowing about the switch. Here's a section of text from "The Associated Press". The full article can be found here; http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzZw ... gD8TSN6NO0

Thought since a lot of Missouri people frequent Legit this would be a good place to pass the news.

Missouri Mandates Ethanol in Gasoline

By DAVID A. LIEB – 2 hours ago

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Pushing the button for regular 87-grade octane, Steve Smith said he thought he was filling his SUV with ethanol-free gasoline. "I don't buy super unleaded, knowing that it's ethanol," Smith said, citing concerns about how ethanol could affect his vehicle.

But Smith was buying ethanol-blended gasoline, just as he had done several times before. Although many pumps don't announce it, almost all the gasoline sold in Missouri has contained a blend with 10 percent ethanol for at least the past several months.

A law taking effect Tuesday makes Missouri just the third state — behind Minnesota and Hawaii — to implement a wide-ranging ethanol mandate. Because the corn-based fuel is cheaper than gasoline, most of Missouri's gas stations quietly made the switch months in advance.

Like Smith, "most consumers in the state of Missouri have been using E-10 for months and probably don't know it," said Ron Leone, executive director of the Missouri Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. "That's why we anticipate the January 1 transition to be a nonevent."

[stev]

Around our neck of the country, we would take Ethanol any day over the poisonous MTBE (Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether)!

MTBE causes cancer, ruins the environment big time, and is banned in several states. However, about four years back NYS made it law to put in our fuel. Those that lived near the state lines drove to the next state or Canada to get fuel due to the health issues of MTBE.

It wasn't until the next state governor that banned it in NYS. The stuff is very nasty. It burns eyes and causes oozing sores after exposure to the gas additive on the hand and face. It's even bad breathing in the stuff while pumping the fuel.

So, ethanol has my favored vote above the dreaded MTBE.

[Methious]

I really don't have any thing against Ethanol. I do have some thing against government making decisions for us with out publicizing them. This was more or less a sneak in. Their not even requiring notice at the pump that it is Ethanol. Up til now if it was Ethanol they had to post notice. Now suddenly it's all Ethanol and the requirement to post it as such has been dropped.

[Apoptosis]

suxor... no wonder my Jeep was running funky the past couple weeks... Stupid Carbs... Ethanol + Holley 4 Barrel = The Suck

[Methious]

Yea the fuel rep up at Flying J says that larger engines will suffer the most from the change, said they would benefit from octane boosting products, at an extra expense of course. One thing that gets me is since ethanol is cheaper than regular gas, how come were not seeing lower prices passed along?

[The Black Pumpkin]

The lower price for ethanol is straight ethanol. It costs more to mix it.

[Methious]

Afraid not, 10% Ethanol gasoline mix is cheaper than regular gasoline. My better half keeps books for a company that pumps between 20 and 30 thousand gallons a day. Their paying 12 cents a gallon less now for ethanol blend than they were for regular un-blended gas. Initially that savings has been off set by the constant replacement of filters in the tanks, as many as 5 a day per tank as opposed to 1 filter a day per tank. Believe me I hear about gas from her, the fuel rep I do computer work for, and the general manager of the truck stop. I actually know more about it than I ever wanted to know.

[The Black Pumpkin]

Hm, that is different than I heard, but then again, I didn't hear it from someone who actually had hard data.

[Amy]

My issue with ethanol is the detrimental effects it has on the environment from production. Most farmers who raise corn do a corn/soybean rotation, which sounds great but soybeans, although a legume, do a lousy job of replenishing nitrogen into the soil. Since it's not economical to do precision fertilizing, farmers overapply nitrogen to their corn (corn requires a lot of it). That excess nitrogen seeps into the ground water, (in Iowa, Missouri, Il) makes its way to the Mississippi River, and trickles down to the Gulf of Mexico. As it hits the gulf, there is bacteria and algae that LOVE nitrogen, so it causes this bacteria bloom. The bacteria uses up all the oxygen, and now there's an insane area called the "Zone of Hypoxia" in the Gulf of Mexico where there is no fish life.

[vicaphit]

Then you have the IRATE people who fight ethanol because one gallon of ethanol uses as much corn as a person in a 3rd world country could eat in a year.