Re: CORN AND GAS THE EARLY YEARS

Posted by RogerDetroit On 2013/1/4 18:49:20

Hello Owen:

My comment about ethanol "going way" by the mid-1930s was meant in general terms, not absolute terms. Yes, corn gas, gasohol, E10, etc. have been going on for years.

If you read the full article in the second link I provided, then you learn that by the mid-1920s the future of gasoline as a motor fuel was in doubt.

From the link:

Interestingly, Kettering and Midgley came up with another fuel called "Synthol" in the summer of 1925, at a time when the fate of leaded gasoline was in doubt. Synthol was made from alcohol, benzene and a metallic additive -- either tetraethyl lead or iron carbonyl. Used in combination with a new high compression engine much smaller than ordinary engines, Synthol would "revolutionize transportation." When Ethyl leaded gasoline was permitted to return to the market in 1926, Kettering and Midgley dropped the Synthol idea.

By the mid-1930s, the alliance between General Motors, DuPont Corp. and Standard Oil to produce Ethyl leaded gasoline succeeded beyond all expectations: 90 percent of all gasoline contained lead. Public health crusaders who found this troubling still spoke out in political forums, but competitors were not allowed to criticize leaded gasoline in the commercial marketplace. In a restraining order forbidding such criticism, the Federal Trade Commission said Ethyl gasoline "is entirely safe to the health of [motorists] and to the public in general when used as a motor fuel, and is not a narcotic in its effect, a poisonous dope, or dangerous to the life or health of a customer, purchaser, user or the general public."

So, in the mid-1930's, when 90% of the fuel contains tetraethyl lead and caused other gas additives to be in a small minority that to me has the effect of ethanol of going away from the mainstream. Was ethanol still out there? Sure, but not at the level the promoters of ethanol has envisioned.