The contamination of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in underground waters has become a widely concerned problem all over the world. In this study, a novel closed culture system with oxygen supplied by H2O2 was introduced for MTBE aerobic biodegradation. After 7 d, almost all MTBE was degraded by a pure culture, a member of beta-Proteobacteria named as PM1, in a closed system with oxygen supply,...

In response to the 1990 Clean Air Act, oxygenators such as MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) were added to fuels in concentrations up to 15% in order to reduce carbon monoxide pollution. It was only when acute health complaints-an increase in headaches, nausea, and eye, nose, and throat irritations-surfced following this increase in MTBE use that researchers began to study the possible health ...

The use of ETBE (ethyl-tert-butylether) as gasoline additive has recently grown rapidly. Contamination of aquatic systems is well documented for MTBE (methyl-tert-butylether), but less for other gasoline additives. Due to their mobility they may easily reach drinking water collection areas. Odour and flavour thresholds of MTBE are known to be low, but for ETBE and TAME (methyl-tert-amylether) h...

In a gasoline-contaminated site in Düsseldorf, Germany a two-year monitoring program was carried out to determine the presence, behavior, and fate of 12 gasoline additives in a total of 96 samples from 14 groundwater wells. The origin of contamination was suspected to be a gasoline spill at a gas station. Target compounds were methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), its main degradation products, tert-...

Methyl Tert-butyl Ether (MTBE) is an important chemical used as an octane booster in gasoline to replace tetra ethyl lead. Maximum production of the MTBE can be achieved using reactive distillation (RD) process at the optimum operating conditions and column configuration. However, optimizing the column configuration such as tray or catalyst location is experimentally expensive. Therefore, a rel...

Ethanol and methyl-tertiary butyl ether (MTBE) were close substitutes in the gasoline additives market until MTBE was banned due to concerns about groundwater contamination, leading to a sudden and dramatic substitution toward ethanol as an alternative oxygenate and octane-booster. We use variation in the timing of MTBE bans across states to identify their effects on gasoline prices. We find th...

Biodegradation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) vapors by cometabolism with gaseous hexane (n-hexane > 95%) was investigated using Pseudomonas aeruginosa utilizing short chain aliphatic hydrocarbon (C(5)-C(8)). Kinetic batch experiments showed that MTBE was degraded even when hexane was completely exhausted with a cometabolic coefficient of 1.06 ± 0.16 mg MTBE mg hexane(-1). Intermediate tert-...