Ethanol Education

[BlazNT]

Im glad you pointed this out. I dont have your background but know of what you said to be true.

 

[bertsmobile1]

2. If the oil does not not bond with the gas, why would it not fall out (come back together either float on top or puddle on the bottom of a tank)?

You said DISSOLVE, not bond, even a person with a Masters in education must realize that there is a world of difference between a dissolution and a suspension.
2 stroke oil molecules are homophillic on the end thus will bond with anything else other than themselves so they bond onto 3 , 6 or 9 fuel molecules depending upon the shape of the oil molecule used.
And they do drop to the bottom, you can confirm this by adding a marking dye but because they are homophillic they will not recombine into an oil puddle and because the fuel tank is vibrating and fuel is being continually cycled through the tank on hand helds, the distribution remains reasonably consistant . They do drop out of suspension in the crankcase due the affect of the primary compression on the partial pressure equlibrium between the air/oil/fuel suspension which for practical purpose is similar but not exactly the same as water condensing in an air compressor.

3. You are right about the fuel lines not getting "eaten" by ethanol. This article was very long and I was generalizing. However, fuel lines are very much affected by ethanol. Since ethanol contains oxygen, and most units are stored in a shed or garage where it gets hot; thermal oxidation will affect the fuel lines. One of two things will happen, either embrittlement or reversion.

Yes the 10% ethanol can, under the right conditions cause some softening or embrittlement of fuel lines but this is no more than will happen due to effects of the other solvents found in modern gasoline.
Benzene is a solvent that attacks fuel lines, tolluene is a solvent that attacks fuel lines, both of which are in modern fuel in higher percentages than ethanol.
Your product may help to delay the deterioration of fuel lines bit to blame ethanol for fuel line failures is a very very long bow to draw particularly as most fuel lines are made from ethanol resistant formulas.
The fuel lines that are adversly affected by ethanol are usually found cheap Chneese products and are better than 20% latex as latex has been chaeper than synthetic rubber & plastics for quite a while.

4. What I said is a fact. However, the amount of time it takes does vary.

I did not dispute this . However bad stale gas applies equally as much to plain unleadded as it does to e10 in fact it applies to modern deisel as well.
Only avgas is guarranteed to be good for a specified time so this does not belong in an "EVIL ETHANOL " thread.
Further more there are so many variables in the composition of the fuel which as you know varies consistantly from batch to batch and the storeage & transport of the gas and this is before we pump it.
So a couple of gallons could be 200 gallons there are people on this list who happly admit to using gas that is years old without problems.
Again , your product might actually stabilize modern fuel for a long while buy telling every one that stale fuel WILL destroy their engines is not true, it CAN, under the RIGHT CONDITIONS cause vlaves to stick but in most cases will simply gum up the carb as every one on this list will agree with and a job I do daily.

5. Again, what I said is fact. I never said anything about atomic weights. Simply that ethanol is approx. 37% oxygen. The more ethanol that is in the gas, the more oxygen. Ask engine manufactures and carburetor manufactures.

You don't need to say Atomic weight percentage that is a fact of physical chemistry.
The actual number varies according to how you calculate it
You might like to check this link .webqc.org/molecular-weight-of-ethanol
However the same for Octane is 114
so in a 10% ethanol blend the actual percentage of Oxygen is 37 / ( 114 x 9 + 40 x 1) or about 3.5 % of the Fuel assuming you are burning octane, which you are not.
Engines usually run 12:1 to 15:1 air fuel ratio and air is about 20% oxygen at STP so for the purpose of combustion the oxygen content of the fuel is insignificant. Around 0.3% using simplified math and ignoring humidity.
Add to that "fuel" had isopropal alcohol added to it , up to 5% Wt/ Volume + MTBE about 0,5 % and both of these have Oxygen in their chemical composition plus a whole host of secret ingredients nearly all of which will have an oxygen or two in their molecules.
Ethanol burns a lot colder than octane go look up the entrophy tables and specifiic heats of combustion you dont want to believe me.

By the way, your comments would not be so bad if you were polite, and if you spelled things correctly.

Believe you me I was not trying to be abusive or rude but as an engineer & scientist I deplore the mixing up of fact & fiction ( extrapolation to extremes = fiction ) which causes things that are plain wrong or at the very best slightly possible under the right circumstances becoming common "truths". This is what the Mythbusters were all about and if you go back through their back catalogue you will see they delt with stale fuel, ethanol & addatives on more than 1 occasion.

 

[John R]

Nice write up, thanks for posting, luckily for now I can still buy gas without the corn squeeze ins.

 

[Mikel1]

I knew this was going to get interesting with that response directed at Bert.

It takes alot of water and fertilizers to grow corn. I have seen wells go dry from farmers irrigating during the hot, dry summer months.

 

[bertsmobile1]

I knew this was going to get interesting with that response directed at Bert.

It takes alot of water and fertilizers to grow corn. I have seen wells go dry from farmers irrigating during the hot, dry summer months.

The tragedy of this is you don't need to process corn into ethanol.
You can make it from almost any vegetable matter, like left over orange peel from the juice industry, potato peelings from chip makers, olive pulp from olive oil making, timber trash left over from logging and some barks are really good.
Remember ethanol is not a chemical product made by processing it is the urine from a specific family of bacteria. For everything that ever lived there is a bacteria to return it to its base elements and return it to the soil and that includes all on this last.
Industry is just lazy, greedy and cheap so it is easier to process corn. It would be enviromentally better to use forrest trash then return the spent trash to the forrests as fertilizer.
Everything we need to live a good life can be synthisised from forrest products, some of you will remember products like "wood alcohol" and "wood terpentine" the latter which was only overtaken by "mineral terpentine" in the 70's.
However industry got really greedy and convinced us that lazy & wasteful is convienant OOPS better stop or I start to get political.

 

[BlazNT]

However industry got really greedy and convinced us that lazy & wasteful is convienant OOPS better stop or I start to get political.

LOL all the governments like to tell us how to do stuff better when it was better to begin with.

 

[bertsmobile1]

You can do experiments with non-ethanol gas and ethanol gas to prove it.

And just to show that I am not trying to denegrate Mike, I will also agree with what he has said in this post.
Water sitting in the bottom of a zinc carb, with a brass needle & in some cases float and a steel bowl will in enough time initiate enough galvanic corrosion to destroy the carb, but it will take a long time & we are talking a decade plus.
many of us have pulled the motorcycle / mower / car etc from a paddock, leaning against a fence etc etc etc that had been sitting there for years and most times tha carb was full of water and after some cleaning could be returned to service.

Many on this list have been brought a mower that has sat idle for a single season with ethanol fuel left in the carb only to find the carb body has been so badly erroded by the fuel that it is beyound repair.
The EPA requirement of a fuel cut off in the float bowl has made this worse because the mower sits there with a float bowl full of fuel and if it is ethanol fuel there is a very good chance it will be cactus.
The same carb left full of non ethanol fuel will have evaporated the fuel and done no more damage than to leave behind the disgusting slime & varnish deposits.

 

[bertsmobile1]

I'd have to kinda disagree with the gas going bad thing. Gas never really goes bad, especially in 30 days. Yes some of the components will tend to evaporate when it sits for a period time and it may not have the volatility it had when it was first purchased but for the most part it will start and run an engine effectively. Especially a mower engine.

And this is your personnal experience and true for the fuel you use sored under the conditions you store it in.
However it will be different in different states or even 50 miles down the road because the mix of hydrocarbons sold as fuel are not stable.
I usually can keep fuel for around 6 months in a HDPE container and a bit over a year in a steel jerry can but the fuel in the tank of most of my motorcycles can go off in a couple of weeks.
The low temperature volatiles evaporate off and heavier particles that have dropped out of solution deposit on the spark plug and cause it to wet short.
People then blame the plug for "going bad" when it was not the plug it was the fuel that caused the plug to go bad.
Oddly enough the 1927 B2 , 1929 L29 1942 WM20 & the 1966 B40GA are not affected the same way. They will start on fuel that has been sitting in their tanks for well over a year.
But the C 15, B25, B44, A65's & B50 will not even kick without fresh fuel.

The problem is fuel is blended to suit the item it is being used in and now days that is a computer controlled fuel injected car engine.

 

[Ric]

And this is your personal experience and true for the fuel you use stored under the conditions you store it in.
However it will be different in different states or even 50 miles down the road because the mix of hydrocarbons sold as fuel are not stable.
I usually can keep fuel for around 6 months in a HDPE container and a bit over a year in a steel jerry can but the fuel in the tank of most of my motorcycles can go off in a couple of weeks.
The low temperature volatiles evaporate off and heavier particles that have dropped out of solution deposit on the spark plug and cause it to wet short.
People then blame the plug for "going bad" when it was not the plug it was the fuel that caused the plug to go bad.
Oddly enough the 1927 B2 , 1929 L29 1942 WM20 & the 1966 B40GA are not affected the same way. They will start on fuel that has been sitting in their tanks for well over a year.
But the C 15, B25, B44, A65's & B50 will not even kick without fresh fuel.

The problem is fuel is blended to suit the item it is being used in and now days that is a computer controlled fuel injected car engine.

I agree, storing fuel correctly can make a difference in how well the gas runs over time but whether it's 50 miles down the road or in Maine or California really doesn't make a difference. People complain about Ethanol and it's seems like it's always a carburetor issues, ever wonder why. The Japanese said way back in the late 70s or early 80s there was not a carburetor on the market that could run a gas and oil mixture efficiently or effectively for any length of time and they were right. That's the reason Suzuki Outboard basically took over the industry.

The thing is you can complain all you want about Ethanol and it's not going to change things one bit, Ethanol is here and it's going to stay. If these guys are complaining about running 10% ethanol in there mowers now wait till it jumps to 15% and it's not going to be long in coming. Cars are being manufactured and already running anything up to E85 without any problems.

The problems people have with the gas they get today is caused by them, they make there own problems trying to change what is today and live in yesterday or the past. There a lot like you with your 15 year old out dated Mac, living in the past and not willing to accept what is today, yes it works but not efficiently or effectively.

 

[DK35vince]

The thing is you can complain all you want about Ethanol and it's not going to change things one bit, Ethanol is here and it's going to stay. If these guys are complaining about running 10% ethanol in there mowers now wait till it jumps to 15% and it's not going to be long in coming. Cars are being manufactured and already running anything up to E85 without any problems.

Yea, and it takes a computerized fuel injection system to make it work.