I don’t usually post opinion pieces, but I saw this letter-to-the-editor and thought it rose to the level of a post for Domestic Fuel.
Glenn Gryka of Mesa sent this letter to the Arizona Republic:
Ethanol is not cost effective, so we are told.
Infrastructure is not available. Ethanol can’t be transported.
Yada, yada, yada.
We import almost 50 percent of this nation’s ethanol from Brazil. Now that is a long trip. Oh, but it can’t be piped or trucked to the corner gas station?
The reason we can’t transport ethanol is because the fuel has trouble with condensation. The changes in temperature cause the fuel to condensate in the presence of air.
This condensation may rust pipelines, tanker trucks and your automobile gas tank.
Take a tip from the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs and Mike Rowe, who climbed into a wing of a military aircraft to change the bladder.
The bladder would expand and contract with fuel in the tanker truck and the pipeline volume. That would in turn prevent condensation, which would prevent rusting metal – not to mention that it would just keep the corrosive ethanol off the metal to start with.
I am tired of hearing “we can’t.” If we can build a dam to hold back the Colorado River in 1931, we can do this.
It is more like “we don’t want to.”
Well said… in my opinion.