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Actually, I am here only as a private investor trying to make my IRA account grow faster and my work has nothing whatsoever to do with oxygenates. There are certainly many folks who know far more about oxygenates and gasoline blending than I do. But, my background does give me a sounder foundation to evaluate this investment opportunity than many others I have looked into. I'm speculating that the US patents Arcon has bought rights to are US 5,679,117, 5,679118, 5,004,850, 5,208,402 and 5,093,533. The abstract of the 1st one refers to a process of preparing high octane alcohols by reacting a mixture of ethanol and butane or natural gasoline over a Pt catalyst. The words "ethanol, butane and natural gasoline" are identical to the description you posted in reply #6 on this thread on Feb. 7, 1998. Further, the inventor on all 5 patents lists his home town as Albany, KY, the very same city that is listed in the Midland, Inc. press release on Jan. 22, 1998 as being one of the company's production facility locations. Coincidence? or are these the patents? If they are, then I'm still worried. The detailed example in 5,679,118 is of a reaction of butane with ethanol which provided a high octane (148 R+M/2) blendstock that consisted of 45.6 wt% n-butane, 49.94 wt% ethanol and small amounts of n-pentane, i-pentane and toluene. This mixture was blended at the 20% level with 80 octane gasoline to make a final product having an octane of 92.8. There are no indications of any new gasoline components here! And, the large amount of n-butane could make meeting RVP specs tough. |
