California and Federal Ethanol Requirements
Refiners are currently faced with the need to reduce the sulfur content of their gasoline to comply with federal and state regulations. As such, it is important that the sulfur content of ethanol be kept to very low levels. The Federal Government has adopted a requirement that denatured ethanol used in conventional or reformulated gasoline contains no more than 30 ppm sulfur, beginning January 1, 2004. The State of California has adopted requirements that are more stringent and require a lower sulfur level, and that place limits on other compounds as well; these California standards are given in Table 16.3.
Additionally, the State of California places limits on the dena — turants used to denature ethanol that is blended into their gasoline. These requirements are set forth in the following table. These are only applicable when ethanol is denatured at the maximum permitted level of 5.00v%. When used at lower denaturant levels higher concentrations of specified components are allowed. For example, in the case of benzene the 1.1v% specified is based on 5% denaturant. At 2% denaturant the product could contain 2.5 times that amount, i. e., 2.75v%, because it is only 40% of the maximum level and therefore equates to the 1.1v% benzene level of a 5v% denaturant. The state of California denaturant standards are given in Table 16.4.
Table 16.3 California denatured fuel ethanol specifications (in addition to the performance requirements in ASTM D 4806).
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Table 16.4 State of California denaturant standards.
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