mtbe
1990, the federal Clean Air Act was passed to improve air quality in the United States. President Bush's proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act initially would have led to the introduction of alternative, non-petroleum fuels. The petroleum and oxygenate industries responded by offering a reformulated gasoline program as a substitute for most of the alternate fuel proposals. As a result, the amendments to the federal Clean Air Act adopted in 1990 required steps to achieve lower vehicle emissions, including programs to oxygenate and reformulate gasoline. Oxygenated gasoline is designed to increase the combustion efficiency of gasoline, thereby reducing carbon monoxide emissions. Since January 1995, the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments require areas that have the most severe ozone pollution to use reformulated gasoline containing fuel oxygenates to improve air quality. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether is one of the most commonly used fuel oxygenates because it is produced in very large amounts from isobutylene, a waste product in the refining process. MTBE can be easily produced at the refinery, at a low cost, and can be transferred through existing pipelines once it has been blended with gasoline. In contrast to other gasoli
As a result, Governor Gray Davis ordered MTBE to be banned in California by December 2002. " MTBE enters the environment, and eventually the groundwater, mainly from leaking underground fuel tanks and associated piping, but also from incomplete combustion in internal combustion engines, spilling and evaporation during transportation and refueling, and watercraft exhaust. Atmospheric precipitation may be another potential source of MTBE in groundwater, because MTBE percolates easily through soil due to its small molecular size and solubility in water, allowing it to move rapidly into groundwater. These properties, along with widespread use of MTBE, have resulted in frequent detection of MTBE in samples of shallow groundwater from urban areas throughout the United States. For MTBE, this frequency of impact to public drinking wells may not be a reliable indicator of future trends because it reflects a history of releases, including those involving gasoline formulations containing no or only low volumes of MTBE. Non-petroleum fuels are the future of this planet, yet these companies are stubbornly resisting to accept the fate of our future. " In 1997, the California Legislature addressed several issues surrounding MTBE. The Environmental Protection Agency determined, "although useful for identifying potential hazards, limitations of the reported studies do not allow confident estimates of the degree of risk MTBE may pose to humans from low-level drinking water contamination. On June 20, 2000, the city of Santa Monica, Ca filed a lawsuit against 18 oil companies for 200 million dollars for the estimated costs of cleanup of the cities polluted drinking water wells. MTBE moves quickly to shallow groundwater because it is not attached to soil particles, and is chemically attracted to water molecules. It also appears that dissolved benzene plumes were of larger regulatory concern than MTBE in previous studies. Animal tests performed in 1997 were not conducted by exposing animals to MTBE in drinking water, but rather by introducing oil containing MTBE directly into their stomachs several times a week.
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Acceptance Essays
