Can you remove ethanol from gasoline?

[Whitman]

just found out about this to day http://www.mrfunnel.com .it seams to work

[Whitman]

add 10%water to the gasoline and let the funnel remove it all. run a second time with less water to be sure you got it all.it would be easy to measure input and removal. mine is on order

[John Mc]

Just remember that when you remove the ethanol, you are also lowering the octane rating by as much as 3 or 4 points for E10 gas.  So if you start with 91 Octane, you end up with 87 or 88 octane.

[Mountain Guardian]

The Ethanol in gasoline is the most moronic idea,  Gasoline has a higher octane, has a pollution index of 1 as compared to 1.4 for ethanol, is much cheaper than ethanol and adding 10% ethanol to your gasoline reduces gas mileage by 8%.    Not too mention the increased price of corn which we use to feed ourselves and out livestock with..... or the fact that ethanol is really hard on older carbs.

They sold us a real bill of goods when they passed that junk.

To put the octane in possibly a more understandable way......  One gallon of gas(with 10% ethanol) has 125,000 BTU of energy..... one gallon of ethanol has 77,000 BTU of energy.  This is why you have to rejet your carb if you want to run straight ethanol in your engine, because you need much larger jets to allow much more fuel flow to make up the difference.

As for the octane yes you are right it does reduce the octane slightly, ethanol has a faster burn rate than gasoline which is how they measure octane.

[sharp edge]

MG
Where are you getting your info from?...  big oil. I did a lot of W/D in WI. The hardest thing was dealing with state,

[John Mc]

... Gasoline has a higher octane...

Ethanol has a HIGHER octane rating (113) than gasoline (usually 87 to 93, depending on the grade). Higher octane should not be confused with higher energy content of the fuel. The octane rating is an expression of a fuel's ability to resist detonation (engine knocking). In a gasoline engine, the higher the compression ratio, the higher the octane rating is needed.  This is one of the reasons some very high compression race engines are designed to run on alcohol, rather than gas.

To put the octane in possibly a more understandable way......  One gallon of gas(with 10% ethanol) has 125,000 BTU of energy..... one gallon of ethanol has 77,000 BTU of energy.  This is why you have to rejet your carb if you want to run straight ethanol in your engine, because you need much larger jets to allow much more fuel flow to make up the difference.

Ethanol does have less BTUs than gas (though I've always hear numbers closer to 114,000 BTUs for gas, but it gould be the numbers I'm looking at are for other oxygenated gas blends, which also lower the BTU content a bit), but again BTUs are unrelated to Octane rating.

In theory, if BTU content were the only consideration, my cars should get about 3% lower MPG running E10 fuel than running "straight gas". I don't know why, but I always seem to get something closer to 8 to 10% worse mileage.

I've never (to my knowledge) had a car damaged by E10 fuel. Most of the vehicles made in the last 15 or so years can handle it just fine.  I have had some small engines damaged from ethanol - fuel lines deteriorating, metal tanks rusting, etc. (as much my fault as the fuel's for leaving the fuel in the machine even when I knew better).

I avoid ethanol blends in all my 2 cycle engines. I've heard from too many chainsaw repair guys of the great increase in repair work they've seen as E10 gas has become standard.  I have run E10 in my chainsaws in a pinch, and it runs just fine. I just make VERY sure to run fresh fuel, and not let it sit in the saw if I won't be using it again very soon. I also enrich the mixture a bit when running E10 (it doesn't take a lot, since even the E0 gas I can get is an oxygenated fuel - which minimizes the difference in the mixture settings needed).

[Mountain Guardian]

My chainsaws are the reason I even know this, I was running 8 saws for a couple years and I kept having a massive amount of trouble with the rubber tips on the needles.  I went to researching if it could have anything to do with the ethanol and sure enough that is what is what it was.  But in my research I learned a whole lot about ethanol wierdly enough it is tough to find much of the info I looked up back then.

It has been about 9 years since I researched all of that, weirdly enough I am having trouble finding much of the info anymore, such as I was unable to even find the pollution index for Ethanol this time around.

As for the 8% reduction of gas mileage when I originally looked all of this up I simply went by BTU comparison between gasoline and ethanol and just simply compared between the energy available in ethanol compared to gasoline and calculated the difference. 

As for carbs, the last year that any were used was back in 90 so you would have to be driving a rig at least 24 years old to see a problem with that.  Most of my rigs are in the 30 to 50 yr range so I see it.

By the way, if anyone has trouble with their chainsaws and ethanol I came up with some reasonable fixes for that, the best fix is simply getting a metal needle.  The next best thing if you can't get a metal is to lightly turn a new sharp drill bit in the seat by hand a few times and remove a very tiny amount of metal, this allows the groove that you get on your needle to seat just a bit further in and keeps it from sticking, this can be done every few months to keep the saw running right without needles sticking.  I had five guys working for me logging on our last farm and I supplied all the saws, man what a headache, between sharpening saws all night and constantly dealing with bad carbs.

[minn]

M G where do you get that ethanol is higher than unleaded,  current unleaded price on cme exchange is  $2.9485 while ethanol is $$2.055.

[shinnlinger]

Hello,

My neighbor dropped off a photocopy of this pic the other day.  It was smeared right where this pic is and I don't know the original source, but it is one of the easiest ways I have seen yet to remove ethanol from gasoline.   I will whip one of these units up in the near future.

[John Mc]

Yeah, it's easy to do, just remember you are also removing 3 or 4 of your octane rating when you remove the ethanol. If you start with 91 octane E10 gas, you'll end up with 87 or 88 octane.

[shinnlinger]

I can't magine that would be much of a problem with small engines, or should octane booster be used?

[John Mc]

I can't imagine that would be much of a problem with small engines, or should octane booster be used?

With a chainsaw it could be. Chainsaws tend to be higher compression engines. The higher the compression ratio, the higher the octane rating needs to be. IIRC, most chainsaw manufacturers recommend at least 89 octane (i.e. "mid-grade"). Remember also that gas loses some of its octane rating as it's stored - this is true of both E10 and non-ethanol gas.

Premium gas (91 octane) is the only non-ethanol gas you can find around here at the pump (unless you buy the canned premix stuff, or can find racing fuel or Aviation gas - those alternatives are expensive, and I also won't run AvGas in my saws due to the lead in that fuel).

[shinnlinger]

my understanding is that all grades, even super, have ethanol now.  If it was just a simple matter of buying super I wouldn't bother doing anything else.

[John Mc]

my understanding is that all grades, even super, have ethanol now.  If it was just a simple matter of buying super I wouldn't bother doing anything else.

In some parts of the country, non-ethanol premium is carried by some stations. The station in my home town in VT does not have it, but there are several others within 10-15 miles who do.

I see you are in NH. There are a few there: try www.pure-gas.org to find them.  This is a "user reported" web site, so the list may not be 100% accurate. If you find other stations with E0 gas, you can add them to the list.

[shinnlinger]

None of those spots in NH or VT are very near to me sad to say.  An old propane tank is in the back though....

[Dave Shepard]

The premium gas around here seems to be alcohol free, at least the ones I've tested. There is a station that advertises E Free gas in Canaan, but unfortunately for you it's Canaan, NY. It's about 15 minutes from me. Strangely, I'm about 20 minutes from Canaan, CT, as well. :D

[Ron Wenrich]

We have a saw shop that carries ethanol free gasoline.  Here's a site that has a list of ethanol free stations.  http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp

[shinnlinger]

No matter how many times folks post that handy purgas site for me to peruse ( and I do every time) the places listed in them do not get any closer than over an hour away.   

What I should do though is pester my local filling station.  They do off road diesel and cater to the construction/logging crowd so I might have some leverage there.  The problem every local pro logger I have spoken to about ethanol use their saws every day and don't have the same issues as those of us that put a saw on a shelf for a bit. 

[johnjbc]

I bought 25 gallons last week, from a station near me. Its medium grade (89) and was $4.50  Found it on the pure gas site.
I have quite a few motors that I only use occasionally. Have been setting them up so that I can bungee cord an outboard motor tank to them and run them on new gas. Saves a lot of problems.

[Dave Shepard]

Most places around here have ethanol free premium. It's not $4.50 a gallon. :

[John Mc]

Our non-ethanol premium around here costs about what the E10 premium costs... close enough that I never paid attention to the difference.

[Mopar70]

I have been using aviation fuel in all my small engines for the last couple years with no failures.
I started at 50-1 for a fiew tanks in a beater poulan as a test, found it very lean.
I ran 40-1 this year in two saws, found my plugs still a little lean but not dangerous by any means.
this year im going to try 32-1 in the saws, i will keep everyone posted on my results.

[John Mc]

I'm a pilot, and deal with aviation fuel (known as 100LL) all the time. This is a leaded fuel. The lead is in the form of Tetraethyl Lead, which is a particularly nasty form. Lead is toxic to the heart, bones, intestines, kidneys, and reproductive and nervous systems.  Tetra Ethyl lead is a cumulative neurotoxin. I can deal with it in the plane, but there, the exhaust port is not a foot or two from my nose. Even then, we never let my wife (also a pilot) fuel the plane when she was pregnant or trying to get pregnant.

I won't use AvGas in any of my saws or other small engines. It's just not worth the risk.

[mad murdock]

A steady diet of 100LL will also lead foul the spark plugs and quite possibly could accumulate in the ring grooves of the piston over prolonged use. I are an aircraft mechanic since 1987, aircraft piston engines have to have the spark plugs cleaned at least every 50 hours of lead deposits, if you don't want to face a potential engine problem.

[John Mc]

Mad Murdoch -

Yes, I forgot to mention that. I do agree with you that lead fouling is an issue, especially in engines that are not designed with 100LL in mind. Even older cars that were designed to run on leaded gas can have problems with 100LL - which can have up to 3 times as much lead as the old auto gas. I've never run 100LL in my chainsaw, and don't intend to, but I wonder if they run hot enough to avoid the worst of the lead deposits?

BTW... someone needs to teach the pilots flying the planes you work on how to properly lean their engines when idling and taxiing to avoid/reduce lead fouling. (Yeah, I know, there are some aircraft where even that doesn't cure the problem). I used to be a flight instructor, and it always amazed me how many folks came in for flight reviews had no idea how to lean an engine properly. Some at least had a clue about leaning in flight, but most had no idea about doing it on the ground. (I suppose if I'd been an instructor out in the Rockies, my experience might have been different - at those altitudes, you HAVE to lean, even while on the ground at some airports.)