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To: RealMuLan who wrote (36197)	7/17/2003 2:21:02 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 74559

Yiwu, I know a lot about leaded gasoline and they think it's cheaper to make petrol of a certain octane number by including lead. In a narrow sense that's true, but if they include all costs, it isn't. For a start, the oil in the engine has to carry the burden of the lead and the lead reduces the oil's life. The lead gunks up the combustion chamber, leading to octane number requirement increase, despite the poisonous lead scavengers which are included in the petrol, so it can be actually counterproductive in anti-knock. It goops up the spark plugs, reducing their life. It's a spark retarder which reduces the thermal efficiency of the engine and increases fuel consumption. Shell developed a spark-aider, which accelerated ignition, but they didn't increase the octane quality so got a LOT of predictable problems [which they apparently hadn't realized they'd get, but we did when we took a look at what they were advertizing - that was 1986; I was then at BP Oil Interational in London]. You are probably bored now, so I'll stop! Except to say that lead also poisons brains [to around 0.5 IQ points, which isn't much some would say, but I'd be interested to see how much they'd charge me to reduce their brainpower by 0.5 IQ points and how many sales they'd be prepared to make at that price - that is too hard for them to figure out, because they have had too much lead in their head]. Mqurice