combating ethanol laced gas

[bruceb58]

Re: water

Re: water

since the solubility of water goes up rapidly with increasing ethanol, pumping gasoline with less ethanol than is in your tank, when your tank gas is saturated with water, will precipitate an ethanol rich water phase in the bottom of the tank, fuel filters, etc...

If you have half a tank of fuel that is 10% alcohol and add a non alcohol fuel to fill the tank, you will have a mixture that is 5%. If the previous alcohol was at its saturation point, why would it all of a sudden come out of solution when you didn't add more alcohol or more water?

 

[BlueLightSpecial]

Re: water

Re: water

The school bus company I work for also owns an in house, Simplicity, Ariens, Gravely, and Echo dealership. The lawn mower techs see this on a daily basis. We have glass jars to show customers what happens to ethanol. It absorbs water, also the depsits it creates in the fuel bowls, once dry, resemble brown sugar. They recomend and sell a stabilizer called Fuel Fix RX. I personally use it in all my power equipment, my ATV, boat etc. No problems as of yet. Its the next best thing to ethanol free gasoline. Really does work.

Good luck my friend

 

[wca_tim]

Re: water

Re: water

If you have half a tank of fuel that is 10% alcohol and add a non alcohol fuel to fill the tank, you will have a mixture that is 5%. If the previous alcohol was at its saturation point, why would it all of a sudden come out of solution when you didn't add more alcohol or more water?

because we're talking about a ternary phase diagram - three principle compoonents - water, ethanol and gasoline (although depending on the fuel blend, the gasonline is a wide range of compounds in and of itself). again, depending on the fuel blend, if you had 10 gallons of 10% ethanol fuel, saturated with water, added another 10 gallons of gasoline with no ethanol in it, the mixture may well phase separate. Another way to say that is that the water that was soluble in 10 gallons of 10% ethanol fuel, may not be soluble in 20 gallons of 5% ethanol fuel. water has generally very low solubility in pure gasoline and becomes dramatically more soluble as ethanol is added. it's not a linear relationship...

 

[bigcathunter]

Re: water

Re: water

I live in Iowa , the corn state, and I can buy non-ethanol gas at any station. I think it's odd that you guys on the coasts not known for corn growing can't find fuel without alcohol in it. Also, as a side note, I don't run E-10 in either of my boats because i don't really burn much gas in them, but I have used almost exclusively for the the last 25 years in my cars because it's a dime a gallon cheaper with no fuel related problems ever.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: water

Re: water

it's not a linear relationship...

Actually, given constant temperature and pressure, its quite linear. Post your phase diagragm!

 

[joewithaboat]

Re: water

Re: water

I live in Iowa , the corn state, and I can buy non-ethanol gas at any station. I think it's odd that you guys on the coasts not known for corn growing can't find fuel without alcohol in it. Also, as a side note, I don't run E-10 in either of my boats because i don't really burn much gas in them, but I have used almost exclusively for the the last 25 years in my cars because it's a dime a gallon cheaper with no fuel related problems ever.

Well I don't no about the coast's, but here in Texas it has become pretty tough to find non ethanol fuel. Its all 10%, you would have to make a major effort to get the non ethanol stuff. Travel and bring a tank!

http://pure-gas.org/

 

[bruceb58]

Re: water

Re: water

Depends on the state's regulations for oxygenated fuel. Ethanol is an oxygenator.

 

[wca_tim]

Re: water

Re: water

Actually, given constant temperature and pressure, its quite linear. Post your phase diagragm!

you're kidding right? hit any of the engineering databases you have access to - there is a massive amount of information on even the simplest representative systems. wheher you look at pure alkanes, pure aromatics or mixtures of both, there is a point around a half a percent water where E5 will phase separate and E10 will not... the other issue is temperature - critical solution temperature moves as a function of ethanol concentration. of course other additives make a huge difference (many of the fuel additives designed to reduce carbon deposits are capable of forming microemulsions in the presence of lower alcohols). The long and short of it is that you're much better off running E10 all the time than you are switching back and forth. Of course the real pisser is that when the mixture does phase separate, most of the ethanol stays with the water - 1 percent water in 10 gallons of pure gasoline looks something like a half a cup at the bottom, 1 percent of water in E10 yields a water rich phase of closer to a gallon in teh bottom of the tank. ...based on my somewhat limited understanding at this point....

All the advice from you, bond-o, don, and others regarding keeping tanks full, checking and replacing water seperators, keeping fuel fresh, using stabil or other additives (ie seafoam, etc...) are greatly appreciated.

by the way - a LOT of stations are selling greater than 10% ethanol gas as E10 (by accident of course... but happens to be a big money maker as well... ethanol is not as dense and it's cheaper...). It's simple to check the ethanol content of gasoline at the pump. Mix a known amoung of gas (ie 50 ml) with an equal portion of distilled water. All of the ethanol in the gas will be extracted into the water phase so if you started with 50 mL of gasoline, added 50 ml of distilled water, shook it up and let it settle, for 10% ethanol you would have a lower water / ethanol phase of 55mL under a gasoline layer of 45 ml... A graduated cylinder works great for this. the loss of volume of the upper (gasoline) phase represents the portion that was ethanol...

 

[telstar1]

Re: water

Re: water

The Merc article recommended by rjdawg is a good one. If its accurate and I think it is,it dispells several myths,some of them stated in this thread. Another point,it wa earlier stated as "fact"in this thread that water does not clog it corrodes. This is I think incorrect. A drop of water will plug a fine jet quite nicely ,with resulting crappy performance.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: water

Re: water

OK...I see what you are saying. I did find this chart so what you are saying is true that at certain temperatures, a 5% blend has less than half of what a 10% blend will hold

 

[wca_tim]

Re: water

Re: water

OK...I see what you are saying. I did find this chart so what you are saying is true that at certain temperatures, a 5% blend has less than half of what a 10% blend will hold

Thanks for posting the plot above. there's a long winded treatment ad nasea by some guy at a filter company in illinois I'll post if I run across it today. btw. the only reason I know this is that I thought it would be a good idea to fiull the boat whjere I do my cars one day when we were headed to the river for the weekend... ethanol free 93 octane, burns great in the car. I had about a half a tank of E10 in the boat, filled it with pure gas and by the time we got to the river and headed out to go skiing, everything clogged up, filters, carb, fuel lines - everything. I wound up with what looked like a couple gallons of a second phase in the bottom of the tank... another thing the that I also learned was that just because there is a line in the phase diagram there, it doesn't mean that once it phase separates (and possible picks up other crap, etc...), if you add more alcohol it will go back to one phase. I wound up having to manually clean everything out with hot water and detergent then with alcohol and finaly go back to pure gas. Thanks everyone for sharing such good information on here - it is appreciated and always helps me when I do something boneheaded or learn something new the hard way. cheers

 

[cyclops2]

Re: combating ethanol laced gas

Can I really make a mess of everything ?

I have never stabilized any of my gasoline powered machines. I have 2 weed wackers ... 2 large generators... 3 running mowers. I am using 8 year old gasoline from a non-sealed 350 gallon tank.
I do not drain the fuel from the gas tanks.

However.......My boat marina DOES DO all the preventive steps to both boat engines. Never a problem with the boat engines. I DO STORE THE BOATS with FULL FUEL TANKS to greatly reduce the expansion & contraction of the air in a empty or 1/2 full tank. Lots less moisture to go into the tank every day and condense.

I DO USE Seafoam 2 times a year in my 2007 Accord V6. I ocassionaly add some extra if the engine gets the slightest bit rough idle. ONLY because of the tiny holes in fuel injectors.

I have been doing this for over 50 years.