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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (19111)	5/18/2002 7:46:57 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

<you say "got the high octane by including cheap carcinogenic aromatics." //This would include benzene. And I'm curious as to which other alkanes you are referring? //> Actually, no. In 1984, there was no benzene control in NZ petrol. I was given fuel specifications as part of my job and one of the aspects I was unhappy with was the lack of benzene control. For all I knew, there was 15% benzene in some cargoes [there wasn't, but there might have been] with the concomitant increase in leukaemia, from almost no cases in NZ due to fuel, but acceptable numbers of cases is another issue and I didn't have that information then. One case is a lot of cases if your child is the case and there isn't a significant economic reason to load the community with a human sacrifice - there's enough of that without ignorantly making more. Anyway, I put it to the 3 other Technical Services Managers [we share a refinery here and all companies had to agree to changes in specifications] that we introduce a 5% limit. I expected them to nix my suggestion [because I had the idea that oil companies were maniacal polluters]. I was pleasantly surprised when they agreed and asked whether by volume or mass. Quickly regrouping, I calculated without pause that 5% mass would lower it even further so suggested that. They agreed. So was born in a few seconds a benzene control in NZ, which still stands [now under review]. Maybe I saved a couple of petrol sniffers from an early death from leukaemia [hmmmm, maybe we should have boosted the benzene - they've probably gone on to commit vicious crimes]. Anyway, there are also limits in Europe. So benzene wasn't used as an octane boost. Toluene was probably one. Possibly xylene, which is nasty and destroys elastomers [nahhh, they can't have put xylene in]. There are a few aromatics which are randomly produced in catalytic cracking which without hydrogen treament are included in petrol and other distillates. By the time they go through the clean-burning engines with catalytic converters [which don't work until warmed up - which is why cars stink when first started on cold days] there's a lot of chemical change so actual tests of exhaust would show current carcinogen rates. Aromatics of various types are good feedstocks for carcinogens in exhaust [burning is never complete but it's pretty good these days]. I don't know which are the worst. Maybe, with better engine design and exhaust treatment we could go to pure benzene as fuel - with lead added! I don't think that's likely really. Mqurice