The Ethanol Papers - Paperturn manuscript - Flipbook - Page 127
The significance to William Hale's position is that even if you want to discard
my explanation for why ethanol might deliver fewer miles per gallon of fuel in a
gasoline optimized engine (that is, that the difference is related entirely to mechanical adjustments and not inherent energy content), now you have an expert
chemist's explanation of why the stated BTU ratings for the two substances is
irrelevant when discussing their use as a fuel in an internal combustion engine.
(The adoption of terms British Thermal Units (BTUs) and energy content isn't the first time that the petroleum oil industry co-opted a familiar
technical term to add some special significance to gasoline and diesel
fuel. In 1892, at The Geneva Congress on Organic Nomenclature, representatives from the oil industry (John Rockefeller's Standard Oil) promoted the use of the term to describe petroleum oil fuels to make them
appear to be a scarce and finite resource, thereby giving it greater market
value. Petroleum oil does not come from dead dinosaurs or the decomposed remnants of living micro-organisms and plant life. In the following
video, Fletcher Prouty explains how gasoline and diesel fuel became
known as fossil fuels)
Click image to play video
If you're a man of science, or an engine mechanic or designer, and you are
using the BTU argument to promote gasoline over ethanol, stop it. You should
be ashamed of yourself.
Gasoline is poison; it's a rip-off; it's unpatriotic; it's responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women, and wounding millions
more.
