methyl tert-butyl ether (mtbe), a gasoline octane enhancer, was introduced as a substitute for lead tetraethyl over 30 years ago. widespread use of mtbe in gasoline, has introduced mtbe into the environment compartments, mostly into the under ground and surface water and water as a second most frequently detected contaminant. in this study, we have isolated pure cultures from bacterial consorti...

As a result of examinations carried out, 16 strains of microorganisms able to grow on mineral media with methyl tert-butyl ether as the sole source of carbon and energy were isolated. Bacteria prevailed among the isolated microorganisms. The growth of microorganisms under laboratory conditions was long and accompanied by low biomass increase. Under the conditions of the experiment, the isolated...

Your recent article panning methyl-tert-butyl ether use (EHP 102:913) was extremely misleading and focused on unpublished, and therefore not critically reviewed data, which is inconsistent with standards of scientific journals. Given the confusion caused by the article, you should provide more accurate information to your readers on why methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is in gasoline and how it i...

A Concise Background on Fuel Oxygenates Fuel oxygenates are oxygencontaining compounds (e.g., ethers and alcohols) that are added to gasoline either to boost the octane rating, to make the fuel burn cleaner by increasing the oxygen content, or to achieve a combination of both. The most commonly used oxygenates are methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) and ethanol. Other oxygenates include tertiary...

Vapor condensates of baseline gasoline (BGVC), or gasoline-blended with methyl tertiary butyl ether (G/MTBE), ethyl t-butyl ether (G/ETBE), t-amyl methyl ether (G/TAME), diisopropyl ether (G/DIPE), ethanol (G/EtOH), or t-butyl alcohol (G/TBA) were evaluated for reproductive toxicity in rats at target concentrations of 2000, 10,000, or 20,000mg/m(3), 6h/day, 7days/week. BGVC and G/MTBE were asse...

Bifunctional aluminum is prepared by sulfating aluminum metal with sulfuric acid. The use of bifunctional aluminum to degrade methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in the presence of dioxygen has been examined using batch systems. Primary degradation products were tert-butyl alcohol, tert-butyl formate, acetone, and methyl acetate. The initial rate of MTBE degradation exhibited pseudo-first-order beha...

Growth of Aquincola tertiaricarbonis L108 on the fuel oxygenates methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE) and tert-amyl methyl ether (TAME), as well as on their main metabolites tert-butyl alcohol (TBA), tert-amyl alcohol (TAA) and 2-hydroxyisobutyrate (2-HIBA) was systematically investigated to characterize the range and rates of oxygenate degradation by this strain. The e...

Biodegradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) by the hydrogen-oxidizing bacterium Hydrogenophaga flava ENV735 was evaluated. ENV735 grew slowly on MTBE or tert-butyl alcohol (TBA) as sole sources of carbon and energy, but growth on these substrates was greatly enhanced by the addition of a small amount of yeast extract. The addition of H(2) did not enhance or diminish MTBE degradation by the...

The release of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) to the environment, mainly from damaged gasoline underground storage tanks or distribution systems spills, has provoked extended groundwater pollution. Biological treatments are, in general, a good alternative for bioremediation of polluted sites; however, MTBE elimination from environment has constituted a challenge because of its chemical structur...

The kinetics and mechanism of the sonolytic degradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) have been investigated at an ultrasonic frequency of 205 kHz and power of 200 W L-1. The observed first-order degradation rate constant for the loss of MTBE increased from 4.1 × 10-4 s-1 to 8.5 × 10-4 s-1 as the concentration of MTBE decreased from 1.0 to 0.01 mM. In the presence of O3, the sonolytic rate ...