Urban Air Uncovers More Fishy Fuel Testing

Source: By Kim Trinchet, Urban Air Initiative • Posted: Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Urban Air Initiative uncovered what looks to be more fishy fuel testing. Last year, we called out the Coordinated Research Council (CRC) for using flawed fuel blending practices when evaluating ethanol emissions. These CRC studies matter because EPA often uses them to create rules and regulations regarding ethanol.

For an unknown reason, the CRC decided to try the test again. This time, it said it used a testing method known as splash blending, where ethanol is simply added to gasoline. This should have been good news, because this testing procedure usually provides a fuel that’s more in line to the real world, or what you would buy at the gas station.

Although researchers claimed to splash blend ethanol this time, the results show that simply can’t be the case. The new results show that ethanol raises toxic emissions. But other splash blended studies prove that when you simply add 10% ethanol to gasoline, toxic aromatics like benzene goes down. This did not happen with the latest CRC study, which prompted UAI Technical Director Steve Vander Griend to review the fuel properties. That’s when he found they do not represent what normally happens when you simply add ethanol, which leads him to ask what else was added to the test fuel?

We want to applaud Vander Griend for not just accepting the talking points and data at face value. He asks questions no one else is asking and digs into the research in order to dissect the fuels to fully understand what’s going on behind the scenes. He continues to help us build our case that something fishy is going on with fuel testing at CRC. And we encourage EPA to not rely on this faulty data.

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