[TR] brake fluid

[Frank Fisher]

dont make me say DOT 1



________________________________
From: Dave
<dave at ranteer.com>
To: triumphs at autox.team.net 
Sent: Friday, June 1, 2012
8:26 PM
Subject: Re: [TR] brake fluid

but the question still remains (at
least for me) what's the difference between dot 3 and dot 4?

-----Original
Message----- From: Randall
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2012 5:32 PM
To: 'Don
Hiscock'
Cc: triumphs at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [TR] brake fluid

> If
"synthetic" fluids are not based on petroleum, then what are they
> based on?
Sorry, I mistyped.  I meant to say not directly based on petroleum.
Petroleum
may have been the starting point for some of the chemicals
involved, but there
were multiple chemical reactions involved in producing
the brake fluid, it
wasn't simply distilled or cracked from petroleum (the
way gasoline, diesel
fuel, "conventional" motor oil, etc are).

I did a bit of poking around on the
net.  According to one paper, one
formula for conventional brake fluid is
approx 53% glycol ether and 35%
Boric acid ester; plus smaller amounts of
polyglycol, bisphenol A,
"antioxidant", and "anticorrosive".

"Glycol ether"
and "boric acid ester" both cover an entire class of
chemicals, the paper did
not give specifics.  But apparently glycol ethers
are commonly made by
reacting ethylene oxide with anhydrous alcohol in the
presence of a suitable
catalyst.  Boric acid esters are made by combining
boric acid with either an
alcohol or a phenol, then using various techniques
to extract the desired
ester from the result.  One text said:

"Some of the methods that have been
used to separate methyl borate from the
azeotrope are extraction with sulfuric
acid and distillation of the enriched
phase (18), treatment with calcium
chloride or lithium chloride (19, 20),
washing with a hydrocarbon and
distillation (21), ..."  (I didn't pay to
read the remainder of the paper)
Ethylene oxide is produced by oxidizing ethylene gas, which in turn is
produced (by cracking) from petroleum (either oil or natural gas).  So there
is your link back to "dinosaur juice".

Does that answer the question?
<g> 
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