Urban Air Initiative: New EPA studies regarding ethanol flawed
April 20, 2015
BY Urban Air Initiative
The U.S. EPA published two studies recently; defending its stance that ethanol increases toxic emissions. However, if you follow the same flawed formula, you get the same flawed results, warned representatives of the Urban Air Initiative.
“After careful analysis of the fuels used in the two studies that were published by the Society of Automotive Engineers International, Urban Air Initiative found what appears to be a continued deliberate effort to make ethanol look bad,” said UAI Technical Director Steve VanderGriend.
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UAI researchers argue that data of the test fuels blended show that the EPA removed the best components from gasoline, leaving toxic aromatics like benzene before adding ethanol.
“By leaving in the bad stuff and changing the fuel distillation, the performance of ethanol was greatly limited. This is not only unnecessary but also does not reflect the way real world fuels are blended,” VanderGriend said.
He also noted that research done by UAI and the automotive industry proves that simply adding ethanol to gasoline reduces toxic emissions and provides a clean burning octane.
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UAI will continue to raise concerns as to why the EPA won’t use real world fuels for its testing. “It’s approach not only unfairly represents ethanol but it also continues to ignore the air quality issues and health problems aromatics cause.”
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