Jimmy Isaac/News-Journal Photo
Posted on 10/07/2009 10:54:52 PM PDT by mnehring
Longview Lawn and Garden mechanic Jason Beasley said there's something distinctly different about gas blended with ethanol, and you can see that difference in as little as two weeks.
"The shelf life is reduced dramatically," Beasley said, referring to how long ethanol lasts before it can no longer fuel small engines. He said it doesn't prevent him from using ethanol. He just knows he can't store the fuel.
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Jimmy Isaac/News-Journal Photo
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| Tricia Edson of Longview pumps gas Wednesday evening at Skinner's Grocery and Market. She said she and her husband buy ethanol-free gas to avoid damage to their vehicles and small engines. |
Beasley said that after two weeks, ethanol loses its combustibility and acts more like a flame retardant than fuel. Unlike traditional gasoline, ethanol also absorbs water, he said.
"Other than it sucking in water and making the shelf life not last very long, we really haven't had many problems," he said.
According to the American Coalition for Ethanol, ethanol is a clean-burning, high-octane motor fuel produced from renewable sources, mostly corn. Ethanol gasoline is hygroscopic, meaning it absorbs water — 50 times more than conventional gasoline — according to fuel-testers.com, a Web site that shows how to use ethanol gas effectively. The site recommends replacing an ethanol-filled tank every two to three weeks to avoid water-related engine problems.
Shad Collum, assistant manager at Skinner's Grocery and Market, said a growing number of landscaping companies have become his store's customers after it began advertising several months ago that it has no ethanol in its fuel.
Skinner's is among a growing number of Longview-area gas stations that don't sell gas with ethanol. Other stores include the Lone Star Exxons on H.G. Mosley Parkway, West Marshall Avenue and Gilmer Road, as well as Valero stores in White Oak, Gilmer and Quitman.
It's not necessarily by choice. Skinner's fuel distributor, Denny Oil Co., sells no gas that contains ethanol.
And it hasn't come without a price, Collum said. Gas with ethanol is less expensive than fuel from other sources, which means Skinner's charges more per gallon than its chief competitor, Food Fast convenience store directly across Judson Road.
"Our gas is higher," Collum said, "but we have to compete, so we have to sell it sometimes at a loss."
Unblended, 100 percent ethanol is not used as a motor fuel, and the most common blend is a 10 percent ethanol/90-percent unleaded gasoline that is approved for every make or model of vehicle sold in the United States, according to the ethanol coalition.
The group also says ethanol helps reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources.
Ethanol is widely reported to need as much energy to produce as it yields on burning.
Beasley is exaggerating though. I can keep a 5 gallon safety can of this 10% ethanol gas (standard in my area) for many months and I have never seen any equipment run worse on it then than when the gas was fresh from the pump. I do use Sta-bil in it, which is supposed to cut down on gum formation, but the quantity of Sta-bil used (1 oz.) is far less than the quantity of ethanol in that same 5 gallon can.
The same thing happens with most alcohols, this is why it is difficult to find 100% pure alcohol, as it sucks up water very quickly. Usually 90% is the most shelf stable you can get. Methanol is just as bad and I am sure ethanol is denatured with methanol.
My experience is that it really screws up the carbs on small engines...
I have one of the newer, “two yanks or we fix it free” lawn mowers. It took only one yank with ethanol gas that I probably bought back in April.
“I have one of the newer, “two yanks or we fix it free”
Make sure you drain it and run it till it stops before you put it away for the winter...
Last year I didn’t have any problems starting up the lawn equipment even though they had ethanol blended gas in them left over the winter.
On the negative side the ethanol gas really screwed up a rubber fuel line to the riding lawn mower. The insides dissolved and plugged up the line and got into the carb.
Yeah, I think I did that last year with this mower (ran it till it quit).
METHanol is particularly notorious for doing that to rubber. Heet and similar gas dryer fluids in the yellow bottle is methanol. Modern US gasoline is not supposed to have methanol in it, and engine manufacturers warn against fuel with more than 5% methanol, but that doesn’t mean a gasoline manufacturer couldn’t have slipped up or a station added a lot of Heet to its storage tanks.
Even though my new mower doesn't have a problem with the ethanol blended gas, I still use it and put Sta-Bil in my stored gas as well.
It also tends to kill the injectors on older cars.
And by older cars I don’t mean classics. I mean 90s. The 300zx was built through 1995, and while mine are still working, there are countless examples of failures which seem to coincide with high-ethanol areas.
It does. Ethanol is a mess.
On the negative side the ethanol gas really screwed up a rubber fuel line to the riding lawn mower. The insides dissolved and plugged up the line and got into the carb.
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Same here ,, my lawnmower fuel line crumbled clogging the carb jet... I live in Florida and the biggest problem with ethanol/gas is the lower fuel economy (15% in my cars) and the fact that it will dissolve/degrade boat fuel tanks (fiberglass) and leech the resins out into the fuel ,, this obviously ruins your engine(s).
If you Google “27 CFR Part 21” you get the ATF regulations giving all the approved formulas for denaturing beverage ethanol. Most of the organic chemicals have a boiling point similar to ethanol so they can’t be separated by distillation.
Ethanol production is causing food shortages and is driving up our food prices.
It benefits agriculutral interests.
And the mechanic tells me it damages engines.
I guess you could call ethanol “cash for clunkers” in slow motion.
Ironically, there is some ethanol free gas that a conservative man in my area proudly sells.
He has a banner at the pumps saying “this gasoline is ethanol free.”
He sells Citgo (Hugo Chavez gas).
The crap destroyed a brand new, $289 fuel pump in my old VW Quantum Syncro when it dissolved the rubber grommet-like ‘mount’ that the pump sits in. The mount was nearly a hundred bucks and guess what isn’t made anymore? That’s right-it is now listed as NLA-no longer available...
Yes, the car did sit for about 6 months but this would not have happened had it had straight gasoline in it. FWIW, it had a full tank of “premium” with ethanol... ..it ruined a perfectly good car with barely a hundred thousand miles on the clock. These cars have the Audi 5 cylinder motor in them-which is infamous for going 300,000-plus miles easily!
Glad to see there is finally gas being made without it-I will be happy to pay more for it just as soon as I can find it!
Ethanol or any other substance designed to burn gas more efficiently (ie MTBE) are no longer needed in computerized fuel injected vehicles, that adjust themselves for the best fuel efficiency possible. Not like older engines.
I pay about 5 cents more per gallon for ethanol free gas down at the Phillips 66.
I would buy it if I could get it
I threw out my 5 ga can because it DOES Effup engines
You shouldnt use gas that is over 3 weeks old if it has ethanol in it
Nothing new under the sun, I heard all these arguments 30 or 40 years ago when ethanol came to this area, the only ones I can agree with is that ethanol is subsidized and shouldn’t be and there is no doubt in my mind, it is increasing the cost of food.
I’ve been using it for as long as I can remember and have had no apparent negative effects in cars, lawn mowers chain saws, weed eaters or leaf blowers.
Yeah, a lot of unknowledgeable people spout that BS. The facts, OTOH happen to be otherwise. Most peer-reviewed studies show a positive energy yield. There are two or three "outliers" which show a negative energy balance, which, for some reason are the only studies that seem to get quoted.
LLS
It’s my understanding that most of the Longview stations selling Texaco and Exxon are getting product from the refinery at Waskom, which still isn’t set up for ethanol blending.
Blending is not done only at the refinery. Most blending is done past the refinery in the distribution of the gasoline.
Corn is for food.
Petroleum is for fuel.
Are you including corn ethanol in your claim? I saw a documentary on TV that definitely said that producing corn ethanol required 1.3 gallons of energy to get the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline.
Now, I do understand that sugar cane ethanol and cellulosic ethanol are more efficient. The problem is we use corn ethanol in the US, and we’ve been told all these grand stories about corn ethanol.
Interesting. At what point is the ethanol introduced? Around here most jobbers don’t have storage facilities, nor do they even use their own trucks. They use common carriers to haul product directly from the refinery to the retailer.
I understand the same thing. The funny thing is these stations are taking advantage of it with big banners that say "We sell only 100% Gasoline, no Ethanol"
Your experience with stabilized 10% ethanol gasoline track my experience perfectly.
I don’t have a problem with a 2000 Harley Sportster 883 coming back to life OK even after sitting idle for many months.
I always keep several bottles of Motorex around.
Yes, that includes corn ethanol. And I don't know who produced said "documentary", but the values they quote are not those of the majority of research studies. The accepted value of the greatest number of studies is precisely the reverse of those numbers.
It takes 1.0 BTU of energy of all sorts to produce 1.3 BTU of ethanol energy "fuel-value". That "energy of all sorts" is mostly due to the production of the fertilizer for the corn, and is NOT all petroleum derived, much of it is from coal or natural gas (still "fossil energy", but not "oil-derived enegy", which is what many news stories report).
It sounds to me like the "journalist" simply didn't understand what the values were actually stating.
Per a Cornell University study I found, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/Pimentel-ethanol.html
Yup, good old Pimentel. Unfortunately, Dr. Pimentel's study is in minority. He has been de-bunked in peer-reviewed papers multiple times. And yet, his study seems to the the only one that gets quoted by the media----I wonder why that might be. If you really want to know what the scoop is, look up the Wang paper from Argonne National Labs, which summarizes the results of about twenty peer-reviewed studies.
I'm away from my home PC where I have the links, but I'll post that later.
Gas WITH ethanol costs MORE without the freaking SUBSIDY!!!
This article is garbage, IMO.
Last year when gas was hard to find in Atlanta, they were forced to ship in fuel without ethanol just to cover us. I could not believe how much my gas mileage improved. A few weeks later, it was back to normal.
Lucky fellow! I have a pair of Kawasakis, one with carbs, and one fuel injected, and they can’t stand the stuff. And what they don’t like, I don’t like either.
We now need a meta-peer study to understand why they differ so. It isn’t just a matter of weighted averages if, say, most of them ignore the energy that went into creating the tractors used to farm the stuff.
Lucky until I try to sell the puppy. The world is glutted with Harleys now.
Thanks. At some refineries in NE Texas (at least the ones I’m familiar with) the truck loading stations are located at the refinery itself. This is the case with the La Gloria facility in Tyler (which does blend ethanol) and the old Texaco refinery in Waskom, which does not.
Here’s the link to the Argonne study:
http://www.ethanolmt.org/images/argonnestudy.pdf
The graph at the bottom of page 2 summarizes the metastudy results.
There is a full text .pdf of the entire study also somewhere on the Argonne website, but they’ve re-arranged things, and the link I had stored is no longer good.
Actually, ANL is just as bad. ANL didn’t look at cost of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and completely butchered the total energy costs.
(ANL = Argonne Laboratory)
Really?? And where is your link proving same?? I recall all of those factors being included in the study I looked at. In point of fact, the study I saw specifically said that the majority of the energy consumed in corn ethanol production was due to the manufacture of fertilizer, which doesn't sound like "...didn't look at...", now does it.
Even if true (which I very seriously doubt), that affects the results of the meta-study not one bit. The graph tells it all. The fact remains that the majority of studies of corn ethanol energy balance determine that it is positive and not negative.
What I'd like to know is why the Pimentel study is the only one that gets any media significant media coverage.
My own personal suspicion is that it is because the Associated Press is now owned by the Saudis, and the coverage is slanted to their benefit.
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