Ethanol Mandate for Iowa?

RST Engineering wrote:

RST Engineering wrote:
Ethanol should not be approved for use in general aviation aircraft. It
seems like a great idea, but the ethanol is highly caustic

The hell you say. Your source? And to WHAT is it caustic? To fuming
red
nitric acid, WATER is caustic.


and eats
hoses

Hasn't eaten a single hose on my Miata and it has been running on the
stuff
for ten years.


Rubber hoses in recent models of cars have been made more resistant to
ethanol. The vast majority of airplanes, however, were built before
1987.

Then we'd better wake up and smell the coffee. I don't mind tilting at
windmills, but when I've got legislators the country-wide embracing alcohol
as a Good Thing(tm) I'd damned well better learn to live with it. Politics,
my young friend. Get used to it. Replace the damned hoses if that's what
it takes.


Yeah, right. The scientific studies are wrong and the politicians are
right. What sort of engineer are you, anyway?

If you want to just bend over and let the politicians do whatever they
want, fine. But don't call it science.


and corrodes carburetors

How? The chemical reaction between ethanol and steel/aluminum appears to
be
benign. Again, your source other than OWT?


The chemical reaction between ethanol and steel/aluminum is not benign.
I was able to turn up several papers documenting that ethanol was
corrosive to aluminum, at the very lest. It also corrodes fuel
injectors.

OWT.

Really? Here is a study that shows ethanol corrodes engines.

http://age-web.age.uiuc.edu/faculty/qzhang/Publications/2005BT96(2)Hansen.pdf

And this study shows that ethanol corrodes aircraft engines:

http://library.msstate.edu/etd/show....1072004-122317

The automobile industry dealt with the problem by developing new
automobiles. The aviation industry can, too, but there will always be a
lot of legacy aircraft around that will not be able to handle ethanol.
All the bombast and belligerence in the world will not make that
problem go away.

I might mention that Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope has a board of
accredited scientists who check his columns. If it came down to his
word vs. yours, I would have to go with his. You can belittle him all
you want, but I suspect that the team that checked his column probably
knows quite a bit more than you do.