Passing emission tests thru additives

How good is the National Police at getting the killers of one of its own? This will soon be seen in the fatal shooting of Supt. John Campos, the narc whom his ex-girlfriend said had turned to drug trafficking. And it will all depend, veteran detectives remark, on the mettle of the investigator-on-case.

The probe is off to a wrong start, though. Higher-ups announced to reporters that the gunman, one of three who tailed Campos on the night of the murder, had used an M-16 armalite. Their proof: 5.56-mm bullet shells recovered at the crime scene. But a radio reporter quoted an eyewitness as telling him the gunman fired using only one hand. This could mean the gunman did not use a rifle, which needs two hands to shoot, but a machine pistol that fires the same bullet size.

Sleuths are also wondering why higher-ups ordered practically all Metro Manila units to sniff in. That would be chaotic, they sigh.

Oh, well, maybe the PNP has its way of finding order in disorder. But mere theories will not suffice. The point in any investigation, as PNP deputy chief for detection management Dir. Lucas Managuelod once said, is to collar the suspect and ensure conviction. To this day the police have only theories but either no arrests or convictions for other sensational murders: of Bubby Dacer and his driver Alex Corbito, of Baron Cervantes, of Edgar Bentain.

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Makati businessmen had better learn from the sad experience of Miguel Varela, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry president. Piatco publicists had used Varela’s name in vain, quoting him as opposing President Gloria Arroyo’s voiding of its onerous five contracts to build and run NAIA-3, when he did no such thing. Now the unrepentant publicists are using the name of the Makati Business Club to make it look like the business community is up in arms against a presidential battle for good governance. Club members, who have been complaining about RP’s high corruption rating, might soon find themselves being misquoted as well.

They can avoid it. But they have to put two and two together: Who is lawyering for Piatco, and who is heading the Club?

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Unioil, one of six small "new players" in the oil industry, reportedly launched this week its Clean Air Act-compliant gasoline. And it costs only 25¢ more per liter. Which debunks scary computations of the Big Three – Petron, Shell and Caltex – that reducing aromatics from 40 to 35 percent, and benzene from 4 to 2 percent would push up fuel prices by 80¢ to P1.50 per liter.

Unioil, a radio report had it, even does better than the Clean Air Act by reducing benzene to only 0.6 percent. And the firm did it three weeks ahead of the scheduled implementation of cleaner fuel. The Big Three are still busy cajoling energy officials to postpone the January 2003 deadline to who knows when. The other new players expectedly will introduce their own cleaner fuels soon, at the same price or lower than Unioil’s.

Aromatics dissolve the ozone layer, thus letting harmful ultraviolet rays to bombard the earth, killing plankton on which fish feed and causing skin cancer. Benzene causes lung cancer and other respiratory ailments.

Unioil reportedly cleaned its fuel with additives. And additives, to engine oil or gas, is what inventor Juanito Simon has been selling for years in the world and comestic markets to reduce smoke emissions by up to 90 percent (Gotcha, 27 Nov. 2002). His additives cost motorists no more than half a centavo per liter, compared to the Big Three’s 80¢ to P1.50. More than that, they save on fuel in the end because the engines run smoother.

Additives, as two readers from California wrote, is how Los Angeles cleared its air of smog in the mid-’90s, after two decades of notoriety as America’s dirtiest skyline. And additives is how hundreds of thousands of private vehicle owners each month renew their registrations.

Mandatory emission tests were supposed to start last October as a requirement for vehicle registration. Although they knew since 1999 that the tests would start this year, bus operators cried that they weren’t ready for it. The cost would be so prohibitive, they claimed, they’d all go bankrupt. Transportation officials, not knowing any better, postponed the tests for all public utilities – including jeepneys, taxis and tricycles – to January or even beyond. Only private vehicle owners were required to go through the tests.

How did they fare? Easy. They simply had their engines tuned up before running the test.

Tune-up, along with regular change of oil and filters, is a must for any motorist who is conscious not so much about clean air but fuel efficiency. But he learns in the process that smoke is pollution, and pollution is waste. Waste causes inefficiency. Thus, getting rid of smoke – with a tune-up – leads to efficiency. The car runs smoother.

Of course, the motorists also found out that using unleaded gas is better. And if the emissions are still high, they turn to good, old, reliable additives, which can be bought in most filling stations. End of test.

Those with diesel engines did the same: tune-up and oil change. Some used decarbonizing additive and scrubbed their tailpipes for good measure, and outdid themselves. They notched less than grade 1, when the allowable is up to grade 3.

Additives is what will save the day for tens of thousands of tricycle owners, too. Transportation officials are contemplating a ban on two-stroke motorcycles that emit too much smoke. That would mean turning those trikes into scrap iron if the owners can’t afford to buy new four-stroke motorcycles. Knowing how transportation officials think, they’ll postpone the phaseout rather than risk mass unemployment. They’ll never turn to additives.

But as a reader narrated (Gotcha, 30 Nov. 2002), additives reduce more than 90 percent of pollutants in those two-stroke jobs. No phaseout to talk about in the first place; no joblessness to risk.

Still another reader, Filipino-American geologist Manuel C. Diaz, suggests the use of the "California solution." California phased out the costly MTBE additive, which was found to not reduce pollution as much as it promised. In lieu, it encouraged oil firms to mix fuels with 10-percent ethanol, an alcohol that is abundant in the Philippines from sugarcane.

California picked up the idea from Brazil’s E10, which is 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline. The formula does not require any engine modification.

Mr. Diaz says that Brazil also has E85 which, you guessed right, is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas. The mixture is a lot cheaper, and pollution is a lot less, but the engine’s timing needs periodic adjustment.

For diesel engines, Mr. Diaz suggests a mix of 20 percent ethyl ester, also abundant in the Philippines from coconut. The formula reduces sulfur in diesel that also causes respiratory ailments.

Come to think of it, Mr. Diaz may be divulging inventor Simon’s secret formulas all along. But what is shown in his scientific data, the Unioil initiative and personal experiences of private car owners is that cleaner fuel need not be expensive. It can be done, it must be done, through additives. Forget the baseless cries of bus operators; scrap the silly plan to ban two-stroke motorcycles. Let the Big Three incur the wrath of the public if they up their prices by 80¢ to P1.50 per liter to comply with the Clean Air Act. As for energy and transportation officials, sadly, there’s no invention to cure vapidity.

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Catch Sapol ni Jarius Bondoc, Saturdays, 8 a.m., on DWIZ (882-AM).

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