As it stands, government is set on pushing ahead with mandatory fuel blending. But key motoring stakeholders are generally averse to the practice.
Just recently, Willowvale Mazda Motor Industries (WMMI) publicly expressed reservations about cars migrating to E15, one of the blending models that entails mixing 85 percent of petrol with 15 percent ethanol. There is talk of introducing even more ethanol in the future.
The company’s managing director, Dawson Mareya, argued that using E15 could harm Mazda car engines as they were not designed for such a high proportion of ethanol. His statement came hard on the heels of Nissan Zimbabwe expressing the same concern.
Basically, the majority of Zimbabwe’s imported cars need to be modified to enable them to take higher proportions of ethanol in fuel. Adaptive kits need to be bought, but doing so might take ages. In the meantime, cars would be taken off the roads after being negatively affected by the high levels of ethanol in our fuel.
But government insists that a higher proportion of ethanol in fuel is not harmful to cars. It argues that using ethanol will reduce the current huge fuel import bill and justify ethanol blending on the basis that, before independence, the situation was the same.
These arguments can hardly convince motorists who would have toiled long and hard to import and own a car. Certainly, they would want the price of petrol to go down through reduced imports, but they would never want that to happen at the expense of their cars. This whole matter calls for a more cautious and pragmatic approach.
There is need for government to establish a policy that guarantees sustained migration to higher ethanol content in fuel. The financial burden should not fall on the motorists, but if that were to happen, the cost should be very minimal. That entails availing migration car components at a very cheap price and ensuring their continued availability on the market.
Just forcing motorists to adopt ethanol blending might have a boomerang effect as consumers are likely to resist the blended fuel versions and seek other options – maybe even smuggling petrol into the country.
Of course, this has the potential of creating a crisis, as prices would get distorted, the blended petrol sales would suffer and a black market would emerge. Needless to say, havoc in the fuel sector always impacts negatively on all other facets of the economy.
Post published in: Editor: Wilf Mbanga
Fuel additive is substance which is added to fuel (to gasoline, kerosene, diesel and so on) for improvement of their properties. Depending on the quality of initial fuel, function, property and efficiency of additives, their combinations in a commodity product are various. The components content in fuel varies from 2 to 20% depends from the weight. Modern motor fuels made from basic fuel with additive blending process. For gasoline, first of all, components should increase octane number, and for diesel fuels it will increase cetane number for improvement of flash temperature in the closed crucible and freezing temperatures. Globecore Blending is intended in production of liquid blending systems for fuel, food liquid components and so on….
http://www.globecoreblending.com
The American coalition for ethanol doesn’t think so it stripped an un-modified engine that had been running on E85 for years it had no damage. Less actually than one running on pure Gas. Fact is Ethanol is better for an engine than Gasoline.