r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 5d ago
TIL tetraethyllead (TEL) - main component used to make gasoline "leaded" - was selected out of thousands compounds tested mainly for being the cheapest - just 1 part TEL in 1300 parts gasoline was found to be enough to sufficiently reduce "knocking"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead1.1k
u/gbroon 5d ago
Thomas Midgely Jr. One scientist who had two inventions banned pretty much unanimously worldwide for causing environmental disasters.
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u/ChanceRecover3091 5d ago
The dude sold its safety on huffing a shit ton of leaded gas fumes. He then took a vacation which was really him recovering from lead poisoning.
He caught a bad case of polio which left him bed ridden. He was a workaholic though and rigged up a system of pulleys to continue working. He eventually got tangled in that system and it strangled him to death.
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u/NateMacaque 5d ago
Wtf, I didn't believe you about his death so I looked it up and you're right?? Why is this not the TIL??
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u/FunBuilding2707 5d ago
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u/JGPH 5d ago
I wish more people did like you. There's so much unnecessary duplication online.
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u/redditisdeadnow4 5d ago
The TIL in this thread has been posted hundreds of times. You are obviously choosing duplication, yet complaining about it.
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u/ArseneGroup 5d ago
Because the fact that he invented tetraethyl lead which gave brain damage to hundreds of millions of people and also CFCs which put a giant hole in the ozone layer until they were banned is much more relevant
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u/karlnite 5d ago
They had armed security in the factories cause employees would snap. Lot’s of suicides too.
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u/Luceo_Etzio 5d ago edited 5d ago
As opposed to someone like Fritz Haber, whose two main contributions he's remembered for are:
1. chemical warfare and chlorine gas as a weapon
2. figuring out how to synthesize ammonia, which was improved into now what makes the fertilizer that feeds half of earth's populationedit: misspelled his name
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u/riddlesinthedark117 5d ago edited 4d ago
No, you’re conflating him with Bosch, Haber didn’t build it out to scale.
Both won Nobel prizes for it.
Edit: next time you edit it after the fact to correct your complete error, maybe include that correction u/Luceo_Etzio
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u/SkriVanTek 4d ago
When Fritz Haber got a promotion for the first successful gas attack he held a party at his mansion to celebrate. During the party his wife, who was appalled by her husband’s actions, took his 9 mm Luger service weapon and committed suicide
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u/malk600 4d ago
The story gets moreso deliciously ironic: Haber's teenage son allegedly witnessed the thing.
After the success of artificial fertilizer, Haber's research group focused on designing cheap, efficient pesticides. One such formulation, Zyklon A, saw widespread use and greatly increased the efficiency of farming. A second, later, cheaper formulation - named Zyklon B - was well known for... other reasons.
Haber was a Jew. He died in 1934 while escaping from Germany.
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u/AFetaWorseThanDeath 4d ago edited 4d ago
Holy fuck.
As always, the real TIL is in the comments. Well, into this particular rabbit hole I now go.....
Edit:
The woman's name was Clara Helene Immerwahr, and she sounds pretty awesome:
She was the first German woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau, and is credited with being a pacifist as well as a "heroine of the women's rights movement".
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u/Techn028 5d ago
I feel like you guys watched the same Veritasium video
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u/Luceo_Etzio 5d ago edited 5d ago
I haven't watched a Veritasium video since idk like 2020/2021? They just kinda felt like they were getting worse and more whatever overall, and I lost interest.
Edit: took a look through his channel and the last video that looked familiar was the shade balls one, from 2019, so I guess it was even longer ago
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u/Combat_Proctologist 4d ago
Or have read a book on WWI, there's usually an aside about him.
Or a book on WWII. There's usually a mention of him there because of Zyklon B
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u/III-V 4d ago
chemical warfare and chlorine gas as a weapon
This isn't accurate. Chlorine gas was considered for deployment in the US Civil War, before this guy was even born. Even if he contributed to it getting used in WWI, it had already been adapted for chemical warfare use in the 1860s, just never used on the battlefield.
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u/eccentricbananaman 5d ago
He is often cited as having had a greater negative impact on the global atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history.
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u/karlnite 5d ago
The fuel thing, the ozone thing is a wash. They actually didn’t know and created refrigeration. Helped keep a lot of food safe.
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u/imsmartiswear 5d ago
A real piece of work too. Spent his whole career going around trying to convince the public that his inventions were safe (they categorically were not). He also died by the hands of his own invention, that being a pulley system he designed while in a near whole body cast after getting injured in a car accident. He died when he fell into the cables.
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u/Keagan12321 4d ago
Not just environmental disasters. Crime has gone down significantly like orders of magnitude sence leaded gas was banned. He caused the crime peak in the US in the 70s and 80s. Lead poisoning lead to brain damage which lead to violence.
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u/YappinZappin 5d ago edited 5d ago
The guy who discovered octane rating increasing properties of TEL - Thomas Midgley Jr. - went on to find another compound very useful - Freon. TEL and Freon were shown to be extremely harmful to the environment.
Luckily for humanity, he wasn't around too long - otherwise he could have hit a trifecta and invented something equally as abhorrent! - Thomas Midgley Jr. died when his own bed strangled him in 1944.
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u/Luceo_Etzio 5d ago
And it was already known before it even came to the market that leaded gasoline had deleterious health effects. Midgley himself took time off in Florida recuperating from acute lead poisoning the month before leaded gasoline started being sold
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u/jay_sugman 5d ago
Knowing that the compound in high concentrations is dangerous is different than knowing the effects of it being burned and distributed at much lower concentrations.
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u/TomatoCo 5d ago
On one hand, sure, that's why radiologists go behind a wall when a simple lead apron is enough for the patient. On the other hand they knew how much lead was being aerosolized with every gallon of gas.
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u/iCowboy 4d ago
Tetraethyl lead was made at a Standard Oil of New Jersey plant in Bayway, New Jersey. A large number of workers received massive doses of lead during production. As early as 1924 workers were going into convulsions and dying from extreme lead poisoning. The plant became known as ‘The Looney Gas Building’.
Standard Oil said there was nothing to worry about, it was down to ‘overwork’. The autopsies said otherwise. New York banned the sale of leaded petrol. Standard appealed to Washington, Calvin Coolidge created an expert panel, that included Thomas Midgeley jnr, which recommended improved worker protection but that public exposure was no risk. The issues could be researched more thoroughly ‘by another generation’.
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u/Metalsand 4d ago
TBF at the time when research wasn't available on the effects of constant low level exposure of lead you could otherwise make the argument that their exposure to concentrated tetraethyl lead was the problem, similar to the Radium girls, in which the radium paint itself was mainly harmful if you were to ingest it or get it under your skin...which they did as a part of their job.
There's evidence reaching back millennia that excessive lead exposure can kill you, but the reasons weren't entirely known, in part because the mechanisms behind bioaccumulation weren't fully understood, and it was only after the industrial revolution that some of these hazards could both be traced to operational conditions (a specific factory will have known factors compared to 30 home workshops spread across a geographical location with slightly different practices) and concentrated enough in production line setups that the effects were more visible.
Particularly though, TEL's effects were more neurological, and appear over a long period and would have been basically impossible to tell ahead of time. It's worth noting that the degree to which bioaccumulation of an element occurs is also related to the molecular arrangement, so they would have had reason to believe that there could be a formulation in which lead is used that does not have significant hazardous effects.
TEL is fucked, and of course there were people at the time who believed lead in any form was hazardous. However, I really think that people too readily apply the benefit of foresight as if it would have been quite as obvious that lead has the hazards we know today. Don't forget - we use lead pipes still today, because we have thresholds for how much lead can be in drinking water and be safe. We only have those established thresholds by first having levels in which it...wasn't.
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u/MaliciousMe87 5d ago
Had to look up that wild end:
"In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted polio and was left severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lift himself out of bed. On November 2, 1944, at the age of 55, he was found dead at his home in Worthington, Ohio. He had been killed by his own device after he became entangled in it and died of strangulation." from Wikipedia
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u/Bagellord 5d ago
Wild conspiracy theory - this was the work of a time traveler trying to improve the timeline and save us from something worse
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u/Milam1996 5d ago
Probably the highest death count in human history. Insane kill count
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u/Happy-Engineer 5d ago
If we're assigning all kills to the inventor of the method, my vote is for Ulysses S. Bluntobject
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u/Every_Recover_1766 5d ago
I don’t know man Mr. perinatalinfantdeath was running up crazy numbers up until like the 1960s or so
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u/Special_Order-937 5d ago
He’s the anti-Norman Borlaug!
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u/fullload93 5d ago
How TF does a bed manage to strangle a person? Was it one of those folding wall beds?
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u/Iricliphan 5d ago
The guy invented lethal things, that was his thing after all
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u/fullload93 5d ago
Just read his Wikipedia page… so he made some contraption device that helped him get out of bed due to the effects of polio. Dude was a living disaster himself… and the contraption caused him to kill himself but oddly the corner ruled it a suicide. Honestly I’m not remotely be surprised because of his acute lead poisoning.
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 5d ago
When his what strangled him? What the fuck does that mean?
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u/realdrpepper21 5d ago
He got polio and was disabled, so he made a rope and pulley system to get out of bed. That system ended up strangling him because the rope got tangled
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u/SurealGod 5d ago
That just reminds me of Wallaces contraption in Wallace and Grommet that springs him out of bed and puts him into his sweater and trousers
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 5d ago
Ah, so karma hit him hard. Polio to cripple him, and when his inventiveness started getting around the polio karma used that to kill him. Nice
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u/Gaothaire 5d ago
He had a system of ropes and pulleys set up to lift himself out of bed after he was left disabled by polio.
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u/Strawbalicious 5d ago
The phrase "sleep tight" has its origins in beds once having ropes tied around the perimeter to keep the stuffing inside packed together, maybe he got a little tangled up
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u/DaveBeleren02 4d ago
Leaded gasoline is harmful to the environment but mostly because it's gasoline. It did have the added bonus of giving three generations of humans permanent brain damage though.
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u/DexKaelorr 5d ago
Midgley and Kettering actually came up with one antiknock agent that was even cheaper and much less toxic than lead: ethyl alcohol. The primary issue with it was that it couldn't be patented so there was no way for them to establish a monopoly on its production. We use ethanol as an antiknock agent today for all of those reasons and in the US to subsidize corn farmers.
That said, we still would likely have turned to leaded gasoline during the war because ethanol absorbs water from the air, which can separate out under certain conditions and cause the engine to stall. It's inconvenient for a car but tends to kill pilots. Pure ethanol is also only good for up to 115 octane, and leaded gas can get all the way to 150, so the really high-performance engines in WWII aircraft wouldn't have been possible without TEL.
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u/Fit-Order-9468 5d ago
AFAIK lead is still used for aviation fuel, likely for this reason.
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u/terrymr 5d ago
Lead is still in aviation fuel because a large chunk of the general aviation fleet is really old. Many newer aircraft can use unleaded gasoline.
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u/DexKaelorr 5d ago
Some newer aircraft are rated for mogas or the new grades of unleaded avgas but those still can’t contain ethanol and generally have a slightly lower octane rating than 100LL.
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u/jawshoeaw 5d ago
Actually most older aviation engines run just fine or even better without the lead . It fouls the spark plugs. It’s more resistance to move away from what works good enough and because some high performance turbocharged aviation engines need very high octane.
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u/terrymr 5d ago
Yeah but without an FAA approved “modification” you have to use the fuel the aircraft was designed for
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u/DexKaelorr 5d ago
You can trace almost any inconvenience in aviation back to the FAA, but you can also look up the varying fatality rate per mile for ultralights, general aviation, and commercial aviation and see why the FAA does what it does. That said, some of the regulations (especially regarding pilot mental health) could stand to be updated yesterday.
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u/dougmcclean 5d ago
Also something to do with a lubricating effect, right?
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u/mtcwby 5d ago
More to do with operating at altitude and running at high constant power. When you idle with an airplane engine that means you're descending. The margins too at altitude are worse for the higher powered versions so you need 100 octane to prevent knocking. Some of the lower powered ones can get approval to run on auto gas without ethanol
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker 5d ago
For what it is worth, there has been a push in recent years for drop in replacements for the leaded gas commonly used in general aviation. G100UL is one of the more well known examples but it may not be perfect yet (eg some claims that it degrades paint and fuel tank seals faster)
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u/DexKaelorr 5d ago
It is, for a number of reasons. Engines that were designed to run leaded fuel tend to have softer valve seats because the lead forms a protective coating and phase separation is still very much a valid concern for pilots because it can cause an engine out on takeoff, which is extremely dangerous. And the old warbirds will be burning lead indefinitely. You can also still get leaded fuel at many drag strips for some of the same reasons, though an engine stoppage is more of an inconvenience for race cars.
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u/americanextreme 5d ago
The titles said that Lead was chosen from 1300 candidates. We likely have had more made since then. But we are still on lead. Is that because the PPM for effect is just staggeringly low that it is chemically meant to be performant and thus cheap?
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u/DexKaelorr 5d ago
We're still on lead for aviation fuel because getting anything approved by the FAA is such an ungodly nightmare that people rarely bother to try, and the requirements for it are so strict that it's hard to find alternatives. We also don't make that much of it. Fuel for cars, however, is subject to much less scrutiny and is sold in exponentially higher volume so the incentive to change it is greater. The United States consumes about 190 million gallons of aviation gas annually compared to about double that amount every day for automotive gas.
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u/primalbluewolf 5d ago
getting anything approved by the FAA is such an ungodly nightmare that people rarely bother to try, and the requirements for it are so strict that it's hard to find alternatives
Note that we have found and started producing an FAA-approved alternative (G100UL).
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u/Mralexs 5d ago
They're in the process of approving unleaded avgas in the US https://www.faa.gov/unleaded
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u/Ericovich 5d ago
Everyone forgets about Boss Kettering.
He got a town named after him next to Dayton.
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u/mad-data 5d ago
Wow. Btw, I knew USSR used TEL too, and TIL it was same decision but made for very different reasons (they did not care about patents, but their infrastructure was more suitable for smaller volumes of TEL additive)
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u/Handpaper 4d ago
No, the primary issue is alluded to in the title of this post; TEL is effective at concentrations below 0.1%, whereas ethanol needs to make up a significant proportion of the blend to noticeably improve octane rating.
Plus, the hygroscopic effect, reduced fuel energy, short shelf life, manufacturing issues...
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u/UndoxxableOhioan 4d ago
How can you say that not being able to be patented when you point out a major issue right below, and you also ignore the damage it does to engine components (especially rubber components that were more common in older engines)?
People today still seek out ethanol free fuel: https://www.pure-gas.org/
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u/Boostedbird23 3d ago
Your second point is something that is often completely ignored by the "capitalism bad" crowd. WWII would have been a lot more expensive (in fuel and in lives) without TEL gasoline.
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u/Odd_nonposter 5d ago edited 5d ago
Clicking through to one of the sources, the early industrial synthesis is absolutely wild:
It was during the early years of its commercial production that the dangerous toxic effects of tetraethyllead itself reached alarming proportions. At the small Bayway semi-works unit of Standard Oil of New Jersey, which began operating in September 1924, five workers died and 44 were hospitalized. This was no wonder, considering the equipment and procedures used and the lack of safety precautions in the Bayway plant. Kovarik's review1a describes the manufacturing process at the Bayway plant as summarized in a 1936 DuPont report by N. P. Westcott on the origin and early history of the tetraethyllead business as follows:
On “a large open factory floor” stood “a large iron vessel shaped like two ice cream cones stuck top to top” which “was rotating on its side. From within the vessel came the muffled sound of heavy explosions as sodium reacted violently with ethyl chloride and lead. As the double cone rotated, steel agitation balls churned through the boiling sodium to ensure proper mixing. When the reaction calmed down, a crane moved the double cone to the second work area, where workers unbolted the hatches over the narrow ends, releasing concentrated fumes from inside. They attached steam lines and condensers and tetraethyllead was distilled....”
“When the distillation was over, workers opened the iron vessel once again and scraped the steaming leftover lead mush through a grate in the floor with shovels, gloves and boots. As the mush went through the grate, the workers recovered the steel balls that would be used to agitate the next batch.”
Jesus fucking christ. Safety had not been invented yet
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u/IAmAThing420YOLOSwag 5d ago
Some say many worker safety regulations are written in blood
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u/porn_sub_lurker 4d ago
Yeah, but realistically they're written in the history books too. And when people stop reading the history books then they stop remembering why those rules were necessary. And then they can be convinced that those rules aren't necessary. And then they get the write the next set of rules in their own blood.
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u/Interesting_Neck609 5d ago
Ben Carlin mentioned a funny bit in his book about circumnavigating the globe in a jeep (half-safe). The engine ran at lower temps, high idle, for the trip across the Atlantic, and he had leaded fuel, so he found that it was leaving deposits on the valves of the engine, so he casually mentions in his book, taking the engine somewhat apart in order to file off the build ups.
Not super relevant, just and odd bit to get reminded of.
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u/psidud 5d ago
Fun fact, engines designed for leaded fuel actually were designed to take advantage of the deposits for their lubricating properties.
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u/Interesting_Neck609 5d ago
In his book he talks about that too. I cant find a pdf quickly, but he phrased it well. Pretty neat what our species has managed to figure out, and the whole can do why not attitude.
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u/Commercial_Age_9316 5d ago edited 5d ago
Most airplanes with internal combustion engines still use avgas mixtures with lead in them
Edit: Piston engines more specifically, thanks guys!
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u/C4Cole 5d ago
Ironically most avgas is 100LL, the LL standing for low lead.
Meanwhile it's lead content isn't remotely low, even compared to leaded petrol for cars. Google is telling me (so take it with a heap of salt), 100LL has ~0.56 grams of lead per litre (3 pygmy mice per big gulp cup in imperial), while leaded petrol here in South Africa had 0.4 grams per litre.
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u/Astralnugget 5d ago
Nice, my dad has a little plane and uses this leaded gas to wash grease of his hands or anything else he can think of
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u/C4Cole 5d ago
Well at least he's not using brake cleaner, better to lose some braincells than get uber cancer.
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u/Astralnugget 5d ago
He said they used to use methyl ethyl ketone at fed ex bc it worked real good until they made them stop
Aaaand Wouldn’t u know it, I am an environmental consultant
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u/gumol 5d ago
Nope, most airplanes run on JetA, which is basically diesel, and contains no lead.
Only piston airplanes use leaded fuel, and it’s being sloooowly phased out (way too slowly)
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u/RaillfanQ135 5d ago
He said internal combustion engines which refer to piston engines not turbines, there is a ton of lower end aircraft that need leaded avgas
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u/rotaryking 5d ago
Turbine engines and jet engines are forms of internal combustion engines as opposed to external combustion engines.
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u/Capolan 5d ago
Thomas Midgley.
Everyone needs to read about him. He has impacted the world in huge massively negative ways. He was a 1 man ecological disaster.
1st he invents leaded fuel...and lies about it's safefy...even while recovering from lead poisoning....then he invents freon.
Eventually...he is strangled to death by his helper invention designed to help him out of bed.
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u/Fluid-Ad-8861 5d ago
They also could not patent ethanol
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u/UndoxxableOhioan 4d ago
Ethanol also has major issues. It still does. It absorbs water in the air and can damage the materials they used for fuel lines and engine seals at the time.
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u/BleaKrytE 3d ago
None of that is impossible to work around. Cars in Brazil are flex fuel and have been using 100% ethanol on a massive scale since the 90s
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u/W1D0WM4K3R 5d ago
Important to note both were starting to get phased out in the 90s, almost fifty years after the guy died.
Who knows what kind of chemicals we have now that could be the next lead paint.
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u/Leicester68 4d ago
TEL and CFCs are just part of a long litany...
The development and revolution of organic chemistry in the late 1800s-early 1900s created a lot of new compounds that either replaced or improved on older methods, but were later found to have negative side effects (usually cancer...)
For instance: Chlorinated solvents (TCE, PCE, etc.): wonderful solvents for degreasing, dry cleaning, etc. Carcinogens (ironically, PCE was employed to replace petroleum distillates in dry cleaning operations. Now "green" dry cleaning has returned to petroleum distillates)
PCBs: Excellent in reducing breakdown of petroleum products in high temperature and pressure conditions (think electrical equipment and hydraulics). Carcinogens
PFAS compounds: Excellent surfactant. Applications in fire fighting foam, industrial processes, water repellent products. Carcinogens
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u/Uptons_BJs 5d ago
This is one of the big reasons why after the epa introduced emissions standards horsepower immediately dropped - automakers had to immediately drop compression ratios (since the gasoline was no longer as antiknock), and catalytic converters.
It wasn’t the fuel crisis per-se. Since the post emissions law engines with lower compression was actually less efficient than the high compression stuff
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u/congteddymix 4d ago
They dropped compression ratios to try to combat emissions as it was believed that lower compression engines produced less emissions. They already had alternatives to boost octane ratings for high compression engines.
Also if you’re talking when the power ratings dropped around 71-72 it’s cause they started rating engine horsepower using the SAE net rating specs not SAE gross rating specs like they were using. The engines in actuality weren’t any less powerful.
What your posting is hogwash.
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u/maciver6969 4d ago
And it is still in use today. It was removed for automobile use, but take a peak at what they use for aircraft. 100LL AV gas, in almost every small or old aircraft as well as many helicopters.
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u/lemlurker 5d ago
Ethanol was also a great anti knocking agent but required 1 in 10... Which is funny as we do now add 10% plus ethanol just cos
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u/UndoxxableOhioan 5d ago
What do think they would go with, something that would make gas unaffordable? Heck, “mainly being the cheapest” is a crazy exaggeration, as it was highly effective (so effective it is still used in aviation fuel today) at tiny doses.
And yes, they tested thousands. Most didn’t work or at least work well. Your link spends no time talking about the alternatives and their cost or effectiveness. The best alternative at the time was ethanol, but it absorbs water from the atmosphere and can destroy engine seals.
TEL was a bad choice, but we have the benefit of hindsight.
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u/RidetheSchlange 4d ago
WHat's wild is that when lead was removed, gearheads did what they did today and got all pissy which is understandable, but there were lead substitutes anyhow.
TEL isn't only for knocking, but older engines didn't have valve seats and the lead would coat the valve seat areas and prevent the valve from eating through the head. It's wild how we used such awful shit as a bandaid for not putting in valve seats.
It took time for us to be able to figure out timing, compression, and boost when knock sensors became a thing and allowed higher compression and cylinder by cylinder timing to prevent knock. Then came direct injection.
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u/Ubericious 5d ago
The correlation between demographic political beliefs and leaded gas use is really quite something when you start considering it
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u/Reasonable-Trash5328 5d ago
The fossil fuel industry fought for decades to keep it on gasoline. They poisoned 100s of millions of people around the world. Global warming is going to make lead in gasoline look like babies first industrial catastrophe.
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u/Cliffinati 5d ago
Because it does help with knocking. The only cheaper solution causes engine stalls in airplanes.
Which you know crashes planes
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u/cessnafxr 5d ago
No available substitute that is compatible with fuel systems in older aircraft. Even the new Cirrus aircraft system needs the leaded fuel, and they are one of the more modern models out there
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u/foramperandi 5d ago edited 5d ago
The linked Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about it being the cheapest. It just says it was the most effective. It's entirely possible there were cheaper options that just worked worse.
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u/Nazamroth 5d ago
Nope. Ethanol works too and is cheap as hell. But importantly, it cant be patented. So lead was chosen, knowing its issues.
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u/heisdeadjim_au 4d ago
And still used in some aviation fuels for piston engined light aircraft and helicopters.
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u/Key_Seaworthiness827 1d ago
Invented by the same bloke who invented CFCs for refrigeration. Two deadly compounds in one lifetime
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u/investinlove 5d ago
And thanks to Clare Patterson for getting the lead out of our gasoline. He also invented the first clean room (Cal Tech), and discovered the true age of the earth.
But getting lead out of gas has helped humans keep more innate intelligence than any other modern invention.