ethanol

[rekees4300]

Was wondering what too much ethanol can do to my car.

The Feds are now thinking about increasing Ethanol to 15%. The automakers says they won't warranty their engines if they do! My 3 five gallon containers are now empty of the 10% crap. Nearest no-ethanol station is 54 mile round trip but I'm going to fill them there. Better to pay a little extra than destroying my 2-cycle chainsaw, mowers, etc.

 

[JasG]

If I can find the story I will send the link. Some group tested a bunch of fuel and because of "splash blending" the fuel is at least 10%, in most cases it is much more. As I said it come from the production plant at 95% ethanol and 5% gas. Gas is cut with ethanol in many states to boost octane numbers and as an oxygenate. Due to phase separation and ethanol being so corrosive, it is mixed right before delivery to the station.

This is from a VA website.
Virginia Association of Hazardous Materials Response Specialists

Randy Ledbetter, shop foreman at a General Motors dealership, knows that anything from a bad spark plug to a failing fuel injector can cause engine problems. But he's discovering another culprit: too much ethanol.

He's seen that problem surge this year at Dale Willey Automotive in Lawrence. Even the service manager, complaining of a dip in mileage, found 20 percent ethanol sloshing around in his car's fuel tank. That's double the legal limit but about the average in more than two dozen vehicles the shop has worked on. One customer had 35 percent ethanol.

Here is another article that explains it even better. This actually refers to the fuel with some ethanol already in it as BOB, but it is still splash blended, even though they make it sound like it's a different process.
The problem isn稚 ethanol, it痴 BOB

Most everyone knows that gasoline refineries do not make E10. The only products that refineries make are gasoline or Blendstock for Oxygenated Blending (BOB). That痴 it! They have nothing to do with ethanol. No gasoline refinery makes ethanol and they don稚 allow ethanol-blended gasoline to be shipped through their pipelines, for a number of reasons, the primary one being corrosion.

Ethanol is made by bio-fuel producers, some of which are now owned by oil companies as separate subsidiaries because the handwriting is on the wall: All gasoline will have to be E10 within the next two years. Ethanol is trucked, barged or moved by rail to terminals where gasoline or BOB from the refinery is blended with the ethanol and then distributed to service stations as E10, or maybe a tiny amount of E85. All E10 is made at the terminal, not the refinery. Ethanol can be combined with gasoline to make E10 by a process called 都plash blending? but that is inefficient, more expensive and it is harder to meet air quality requirements and other ASTM standards for finished gasoline, so E10 is usually made by combining ethanol with BOB, which is designed for ethanol blending, resulting in finished legal E10 gasoline. Splash blending is declining, while blending ethanol with BOB is spreading.

Here is the problem with BOB:

First, BOB always has a lower 登ctane. Ethanol has very high octane and adding 10% by volume to gasoline raises the Anti Knock Index (AKI) about 3 points, so the BOB used to make regular grade gasoline is generally 84 AKI, and the BOB used to make premium gasoline is never higher that 90 AKI.

Second, this is what the Director of the Division of Air Resources, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, stated in his E15 waiver comments:


摘10 is not simply ethanol added to finished gasoline. Since most gasoline at retail contains ethanol, the industry factors the addition of ethanol into the formulation of the petroleum-based portion of the final blend. The chemical properties of ethanol and its dilution impact allow refiners to produce a petroleum-based blendstock which when combined with a specified amount of ethanol (or other oxygenate) results in a final blend with the desired legal and market properties. The petroleum-based blendstock, in most cases, would not qualify as gasoline or be legal to sell as gasoline. For RFG this blendstock is RBOB. For conventional gasoline it is CBOB, and for California RFG it is CaRBOB.

So just think what E15 will mean when at E10 the mix can be as high as 35%. Then they want to increase it by another 50%.

 

[JasG]

It doesn't help any that at least 30 states have the "own" personal blend of gas. I know I have read of this issue along causing problems with small engines including ATV's and motorcycles. Yet the fuel is all pumped in the same pipe lines across many states.