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DECISION-MAKING, SCIENCE AND GASOLINE ADDITIVES
Citation:
Weaver, J W. AND M. C. Small. DECISION-MAKING, SCIENCE AND GASOLINE ADDITIVES. Presented at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 10-14, 2001.
Impact/Purpose:
The objective of this research is to develop a multicomponent, mass-balance-based model for simulating transport of spilled oils with and without dispersant treatments.
Description:
Methyl-tert butyl ether (MTBE) has been used as a gasoline additive to serve two major purposes. The first use was as an octane-enhancer to replace organic lead, beginning in 1979. The second use, which began about 1992, was as an oxygenated additive to meet requirements of the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990. Generally, the amount of MTBE used for octane enhancement was lower than that required to meet CAAA requirements. An unintended consequence of MTBE use has been widespread groundwater contamination. The decision to use certain amounts of MTBE or other chemicals as gasoline additives is the outcome of economic, regulatory, policy, political, and scientific considerations. Decision makers ask questions such as "How do ground water impacts change with changing MTBE content? How many wells would be impacted? and What are the associated costs?" These are best answered through scientific inquiry, but many different approaches could be developed. Decision criteria include time, money, comprehensiveness, and complexity of the approach. Because results must be communicated to a non-technical audience, there is a trade-off between the complexity of the approach and the ability to convince economists, lawyers and policy makers that results make sense.
The question on MTBE content posed above was investigated using transport models, a release scenario and gasoline composition. Because of the inability of transport models to predict future concentrations, an approach was chosen to base comparative assessment on a calibrated model. By taking this approach, "generic" modeling with arbitrarily selected parameters was avoided and the validity of the simulation results rests upon relatively small extrapolations from the original calibrated models. A set of simulations was performed that assumed 3\% (octane enhancement) and 11\% (CAAA) MTBE in gasoline. The results were that ground water concentrations would be reduced in proportion to the reduction of MTBE in the fuel. Plume lengths, though, would not be proportionately reduced. One implication of these results was that the concentrations would be reduced, but the number of impacted wells would remain similar. Because the simulations included emplacement of the gasoline, dissolution from contact with flowing ground water and transient transport in the aquifer, a common-sense explanation of the results was difficult to construct. A simpler model was then used for the purpose of explaining to policy makers why the plume length reductions were less than proportionate to the reduction of the amount of MTBE. The model was simple enough (one-dimensional, steady state, constant source concentration) so that the effect of each term of the transport equation on plume length could be easily shown. The weight of evidence from using multiple models, direct explanations from the transport equation, and field observation, then provided a sufficient basis for policy makers to understand scientifically how gasoline composition affects ground water impacts.