Fillers in the Gasoline

And I bet you see more vapor from exhaust pipes with cars that have been sitting for a long time with 10% ethanol, as well as less water vapor than car running no ethanol Pure-gas.org - ethanol-free gasoline in the U.S. and Canada and it's even more pronounced of an issue with watercraft where ethanol can leave you adrift at sea calling for a rescue.

 

I wonder if the difference would be easy to measure. The plain facts of the gasoline-oxygen reaction happening there are to produce about a gallon of water per gallon of gas.

So you'd be talking that amount plus, ok, however much more water has been taken up by the ethanol.

 

With perfect combustion, a gallon of pure gasoline will produce a little over a gallon of water. https://www.quora.com/How-much-water-does-my-car-produce-after-burning-one-gallon-of-gas While the combustion isn't perfect in the engine, much of any unburned fuel will be converted to water and CO2 in the catalytic converter.

As a vapor, that gallon of water will take up a much larger volume coming out the exhaust pipe.

Water is also a coproduct of burning ethanol in the E10. Without measures to keep moisture away, ethanol will become about 95% pure with the rest being water. E10 will have at least 0.5% water in it. That is adding 0.005 gallons of water to our big vapor cloud of a gallon coming out the tail pipe. Minus the water combustion product of the fuel that tag-a-long water displaced.

As for watercraft, even 'pure' gas will pick up water in that humid environment in time. Leading to the same issue of un mixed water getting in the lines and fuel starving the engine. If fiberglass isn't a concern, using E30 will eliminate the phase separation issue.

 

Don't you go adding facts into this thread, most aren't ready to handle that sort of abuse ....

I love the logic the high humidity combined with ethanol in the fuel will produce more water at the tailpipe The ethanol has nothing to do with it, the air just holds more water when the humidity is high.

I agree that ethanol has a lot more cleaning power than petrol, but just like the water, it is held in the ethanol and passed through combustion chamber and out the exhaust.
It does melt some plastics, like the stuff they used for fuel tank pick up strainers ..... but buying fuel that needed to go through a strainer is going to produce a lot more dramas than fuel with ethanol in it .... The black composite fuel floats in the Motorcraft 780 4 barrel had the coating melted off, same as the floats in the cheaper variant Holley carbies, but switching the the brass floats solved that problem.

As far as the engine builders lobbying the govt regarding the use of ethanol in the fuel, that was funded by the petroleum industry, they could very well complain themselves that ethanol substitution would eat into profits, so the engine manufacturers were the better choice.

Now the fuel companies can use it as a filler, you won't hear them complaining about it until the oil price returns to being cheaper than ethanol ..... At least the farmers will have somewhere for the crops they can't sell for food, they can sell it as fuel base stock .....

Over here, they make ethanol out of the rubbish remains on wheat flour after anything worth selling has been stripped out of the grains and premium flour, worth more that way than a filler for stock feed .....

T1 Terry

 

Now that you grumpy old men who don't understand phase separation are done telling me to get off your lawn and I still haven't got off your lawn: Let's get back to the point that the amount of water produced in normal engine combustion isn't as relevant as what Ethanol does to bring water in that poisons your entire vehicle/vessels fuel system:

"Ethanol's –OH group is polar, so it will pull moisture out of humid air the way straight gasoline (a nonpolar hydrocarbon mix) won't. In an E10 blend, the ethanol fraction can hold about 0.5% water by volume in suspension before the blend goes unstable — roughly 3.8 teaspoons of water per gallon of fuel, dissolved invisibly throughout the blend. Past that threshold you get phase separation: the bond between ethanol and gasoline breaks down, the ethanol-water mixture settles to the bottom of the tank as a distinct layer, with the now-lower-octane gasoline floating on top. Since fuel pickup usually draws from the tank bottom, the engine ends up trying to run on that water/ethanol layer — which it generally can't do well or at all." Fuel Phase Separation Explained: Why Ethanol Destroys Marine Engines | Mobile Marina Blog

 

If you have petrol with 4 teaspoons of water per gallon, you need to find a better service station. A US Gal = 768 US teaspoons, 10% ethanol = 77 teaspoons. A Prius Gen 2 fuel tank holds 12 US gals, if the bladder in the US tank will let you put that much in. If the tank full was E10, 8292 teaspoons of that would be petrol, 924 teaspoons would be ethanol, 9216 teaspoons in total. That means 1.2 US Gal is ethanol, that means the tank would need 48 teaspoons of water in it to cause phase separation ....... that = 1 US cup full of water ......

I accept your quote and from that I would recommend not using your gen 2 Prius as a boat while running E10 fuel .......

The real concern will be the amount of ethanol the fuel companies are using as fillers in pump petrol if you plan to use it in a boat .....
The other thing to remember is, all alcohols will mix with water, so what ever they use as an octane booster in the base petrol, will also absorb water .....

T1 Terry

 

Water was getting into fuel systems before there was ethanol blended in. Getting it out was simply accomplished by adding an alcohol to the fuel to get the water mixing with the gas. It is the same solution when there is too much water for the ethanol in E10 to mix with the gas and phase separation occurs.

 

Thanks to 10% ethanol, they can put a little water in the gas now and get away with it. I try to go to stations where they wouldn’t do that. When storing a car it is much better now, no pure water layer forming at the bottom. As everyone knows, water and ethanol is not a mixture. You got your bottle of beer, and it does not need shaking.

 

We use 'field corn' which nearly ALL commercially grown corn.
It's different than 'sweet' corn which is the stuff you see at your local groceries.
It has three primary purposes:
Poisoning humans with (HFCS) and dense carbohydrates.
Sileage - because beef cattle is MUCH more 'sustainable' than using ethanol for fuel.
Hooch. See also: Poisoning humans - although even in America (land of the commercial Lagers) corn is usually only present in about 15% of beer.

Maize is a fairly high resource ag product but the roughly 40% of it that is used for fuel is probably 'better for the planet' (whatever THAT means...) than the portion that we use to fatten kids and cows.

It's probably suboptimal for some carbureted engines - the Climate Industrial Complex has been trying to outlaw them anyway......

 

In many Eastern States, ethanol (10%) is added. This does tend to cause issues if you have water 'dissolved' in your fuel (of course, a small amount.) This is claimed to reduce nitrogen compounds from forming but really, I have no idea if true. Does it reduce overall emissions - not considering the energy needed to create/transport/process/deliver said corn into ethanol to refinery.
Do some stations add their own mysterious stuff to their tanks? Certainly possible but considering cost/trouble, why would they? My less then two cent's on this topic because I'm avoiding chores to do outside.

 

...a noble cause!

 

Should all be driving electric cars anyway Certainly don't understand why corn that's not for eating is grown, or doesn't wheat grow well over there?
We have weeds growing in the tropical parts of Australia that produce a sap ideal for diesel fuel production, but I doubt we'll ever see a manufacturing facility to produce the stuff .....
Used deep fryer oil was popular until a mob started selling the new oil in bulk tankers and pumping out the old stuff, processing it and running their truck fleet on it and selling it to the oil companies to mix with the low sulphur diesel, because that crap is more abrasive than kero.
So the days of running the diesel engine on deep fryer oil seems to have passed, unless you can find a supply not contractually tied up with this bulk fryer oil mob.

T1 Terry