2. Nikolaus August Otto
• The “father” of the
internal combustion
engine.
• His engine ran on
alcohol.
3. The first prototype internal
combustion engine, developed in
1826, ran on a mixture of alcohol
and turpentine.
4. And So To Gasoline
• Before motor cars
became widespread,
the most useful
product from crude oil
was kerosene which
was used for lighting
lamps.
5. • This left, among other
things, gasoline which
was far too flammable
to burn in lamps,
since it was liable to
cause an explosion
6. Gasoline Disposal
• A small amount of gasoline was sold as a
solvent for domestic and industrial
cleaning.
• Most oil refiners dumped their gasoline
into the nearest river
7. BIG OIL
• The oil companies saw the automobile as
the answer to their prayers as an outlet for
their highly volatile and dangerous
gasoline.
8. However, there was a problem!
• Gasoline tended to explode in the
cylinders of the internal combustion
engine, rather than burning smoothly.
• This produced a noise commonly called
knocking or pinking.
It caused a reduction in fuel efficiency, as
well as damage to the engine.
10. By 1917 this search had turned to
alcohol.
• In tests supervised by
Thomas Midgley, who
worked in the
research division of
General Motors, it
was found that
alcohols were
amongst the best
antiknock additives.
11. The reason was simple
• The alcohol referred to here is ethanol,
also called ethyl alcohol. It mixes freely
with gasoline, but it reacts with oxygen
more slowly.
• It is therefore possible to control the rate
of burning of the fuel in the engine.
12. By 1921 Midgley was driving his
car on a mixture of 30% alcohol
and 70% gasoline
13. • In the meantime,
Henry Ford had
designed his first car
to run on alcohol
alone.
14. • Also, as late as 1928,
the famous Ford
Model A could
change from running
on gasoline to alcohol
by flicking a switch on
the dashboard.
15. • Of course, the idea of alcohol becoming a
partial or total replacement for gasoline did
not appeal to the oil companies, so they
sought an alternative antiknock additive
that did not threaten their sales and
profits.
16. It’s That Man Midgley Again
• Less than two months after he had been
singing the praises of alcohol to the
American Society of Automotive
Engineers, Thomas Midgley discovered
that the addition of tetraethyl lead (TEL) to
gasoline also acted as an antiknock agent.
17. Tetraethyl lead
• TEL was added to gasoline in very small
amounts, so the profits of Big Oil were not
threatened as they would have been by
the use of alcohol.
18. ETHYL
• A new company,
called the Ethyl
Corporation, was
formed to produce
TEL.
19. Lead: a neurotoxin
• Notice that lead, which was a well known
neurotoxin, was not included in the name
of the new company which was jointly
owned by General Motors and Standard
Oil of New Jersey.
20. Toxicity
• The toxicity of concentrated TEL was
recognized early; many TEL researchers
and workers, including Midgley, became
victims of lead poisoning, and dozens
died. In 1925, the sales of TEL were
suspended for one year to conduct a
hazard assessment.
21. Dr. Robert Kehoe
• The Hazard
assessment was
conducted by
• Dr. Robert Kehoe of
the University of
Cincinnati, who was
the Ethyl
Corporation's chief
medical consultant.
22. Guess his conclusions
• In 1928, he managed to convince the U.S.
Surgeon General that there was no basis
for concluding that leaded fuels posed any
health threat.
23. And the opposition?
• Independent scientists who exposed the
scientific inconsistencies in his work, were
severely criticized and sometimes
threatened by the lead interests, and even
by the Surgeon General and the
Department of Public Health.
24. Enter Clair Patterson
• This name should be
as instantly
recognized as
Newton or Einstein,
but it is not the case.
25. What’s in a name
• Even respected scientific publications
have got it wrong because despite the
name, Clair Patterson was a man.
26. HIS RISE TO FAME
• He determined the age of the Earth to be
4.5 billion years; this was a problem that
had troubled Lord Kelvin for the latter part
of his life, and this alone should have
earned Patterson a Nobel Prize.
27. AGE OF THE EARTH
• He determined the age of the Earth by
measuring small amounts of lead
contained in meteorites
28. CONTAMINATION?
• However, this proved to be rather difficult
because his samples contained much
more lead than expected.
29. SCIENCE’S FIRST STERILE
LABORATORY
• By studying these samples in the world’s
first truly sterile laboratory, he found lead
levels about 200 times higher than they
should have been.
30. ICE-CORE SAMPLING
• His results were simply not believed, so he
pioneered the technique of ice-core
sampling, and showed that lead levels in
the Greenland ice sheet had indeed
increased by 100 – 200 times over pre-
industrial levels.
31. THE END FOR LEAD?
• The lead industry’s days of conning the
Surgeon General and the public at large
were clearly coming to an end.
32. PHOTOCHEMICAL SMOG
• By this time, chemical smog was a
problem in many cities, and reluctant
authorities were forced to take action to
counter pollution from car exhausts.
33. THE CATALYTIC CONVERTER
• One of the methods
of reducing this
pollution was by
inserting a catalytic
converter into the
car’s exhaust system.
34. POISONED PLATINUM
• Catalytic converters contain expensive
platinum catalysts which would be
“poisoned” by the lead additive in petrol.
36. ETHYL CORPORATION SOLD
• In 1962 the Ethyl Corporation was sold to
the Albemarle Paper Company which was
less than one tenth of its size; it had to
borrow $200 million to make the purchase.
37. A STRANGE PURCHASE
• At the time it was the largest leveraged
buyout in history, a bit like the corner
grocery buying out Tesco.
38. G.M. IS SUSPECT
Some cynics have suggested that General
Motors promoted this sale because they
could foresee that when catalytic
converters were fitted to cars, leaded
gasoline could no longer be used.
39. NON-LEAD ANTIKNOCK
ADDITIVES
• With the demise of leaded gasoline, we
might have expected that alcohol would
again be universally embraced as the
antiknock agent of choice.
40. BIG OIL STILL DOESN’T WANT
ALCOHOL
• Sadly, it appears that Big Oil is now just as
determined that alcohol will not be a
partial replacement for gasoline in motor
fuel, as it was 90 years ago.
41. SO WHAT NOW?
• Trimethyl pentane is perhaps the
antiknocking agent of first choice, but
organomanganese compounds, ethers,
aromatics, reformed naphtha compounds,
and even catenanes are being, or have
been used.
42. AND ALCOHOL?
• Alcohol is actually being used in some
countries as a blend with gasoline, but not
on the scale that would be expected, given
the dwindling level of the Earth’s crude oil
reserves, never mind Thomas Midgley’s
enthusiastic endorsement of 1921.
43. THOMAS MIDGLEY
• Thomas Midgley was an engineer, and the
world would have been a much better
place, had he remained so. Apart from
poisoning the planet with lead, his other
contribution to mankind was the group of
compounds called freons which have led
to the partial destruction of the Earth’s
ozone layer.
44. HIS FINAL INVENTION
• His final invention claimed only one victim.
Sadly, he contracted polio in later life, and
was bedridden. He invented a system of
pulleys and lines, in order to assist him in
changing his position in bed, and this
worked well until the day when he
unfortunately became entangled in the
lines and suffered death by strangulation.
45. OCTANE RATING
• The octane rating is a measure of the
resistance of petrol and other fuels to pre-
ignition.
• The gasoline fraction from the oil refinery
has a low octane number, too low for the
good of the engine. This allows alcohol to
be blended with it in quite large amounts
instead of resorting to expensive
antiknocking additives.
46. COMPRESSION RATIO
• When the piston in an internal combustion
rises from its lowest position in the
cylinder to its highest position, it
compresses the petrol/air mixture. The
largest volume of the cylinder (piston at
the bottom) divided by the smallest
volume of the cylinder (piston at the top)
gives the compression ratio
47. BACK TO ALCOHOL
For most cars, the compression ratio is
around 10:1, but some racing engines
have a compression ratio greater than
15:1. These engines have to run on
alcohol.
48. 1826 and all that
So we have come full cicle back to 1826;
the last occasion when alcohol was the
fuel of choice!
