Gas stations without ethanol

[SoobieOut]

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls

Here's what I know about it: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...gas-13576.html

Bump

Just used this website to find a place to fill up.

With the recent gas price spike, it is more important than ever to get what you pay for!

My car does not run well or get good mileage on ethanol. It is increasingly difficult to find gas stations that carry pure gas! Seems that the 7-11 stations carry real gas.

Shame on ADM lobbyist for getting us into this mess.

[fjasper]

I don't know all the details, but they've been working on a lead-free fuel for aviation use for a long time. It's apparently a difficult technical problem, due to the various requirements of avgas.

It has to last practically forever in storage (which pretty much knocks ethanol out of the picture), has to be extremely resistant to detonation (running in some large, highly stressed, turbocharged, air-cooled engines), has to be combatible with the materials in the fuel systems in the existing fleet (airplanes aren't replaced at anywhere near the rate cars are-a significant proportion of the light aircraft fleet (the ones burning gasoline instead of jet fuel) are from the '50s, '60s, and '70s). It has to work when it's extremely cold, and when it's extremely hot.

Incidentally, the first item on the list is why avgas makes the perfect winterization fuel for machinery without catalytic converters. Put avgas in your snowblower at the end of winter, and the next fall, it'll start as though it's got brand new gas in it.

100 octane low-lead (100LL), the standard aviation gasoline, has way more lead in it than leaded car gas ever did, from what I understand, and fuel and engine design are closely optimized to each other.

Airplane engines routinely run at 100% power (wide open throttle, at maximum rpm) for minutes at a time, then 75% power for hours at a time, so there's not as much wiggle room for little differences in parameters.

In addition, safety data takes into account the power output of the engines to determine if you're able to load a certain amount of cargo into the airplane and take off from a certain runway safely. As a result, any reduction in power output due to fuel reformulation is basically unworkable, since you'd have no way to determine if the flight could be made safely on the alternative fuel, short of complete recalculation of the performance data. It's not that it can't be done, it just all costs money, sometimes a lot of money.

The low power aircraft engines that were designed to run on 80/87 octane gas can usually be signed off to run on unleaded car gas, but the the higher performance engines, basically almost any engine that's used for commercial or business operation, needs the high octane juice.

[fjasper]

Originally Posted by MorphDaCivic

Shame on ADM lobbyist for getting us into this mess.

I just watched "The Informant!" last night, about the guy who tattled on ADM for their price fixing in the 80s and 90s. Pretty fun movie.

As a libertarian liberal (help people out, but realize you're not going to be able to push water uphill forever), I think the system of subsidies and trade barriers that has given us corn ethanol in our fuel just seems silly. And while I'm more libertarian than not, I think "money=speech=unlimited in politics" is causing some real problems for our country. Not a fan of the Citizen's United decision. Anyhoo...

We want to protect sugar farmers, so we block imports of sugar. Good.
We want to get our corn-state senators re-elected, so we subsidize corn production, making their constituents rich and happy so they vote for incumbents. Money in politics.
That creates a surplus of corn, and high prices for sugar. Market response.
Some clever company/person finds a way to make sugar from cheap corn. It's not particularly efficient, but corn is so cheap that it's profitable. Market response.
Now we have all this "sugar" that's artifically cheap, and someone figures out how to make it into fuel and make some money. Market response.
Then we need to make sure the corn-state senators get re-elected again, so we require that corn-fuel in all the fuel so the farmers make money and vote for incumbents. Money in politics again.
Now there's such a demand for corn-sugar-fuel that corn starts to get scarce, and the food that used to be made with real sugar, and is now made with (artificially cheap) corn sugar, starts getting expensive. Market response.
And the people get angry because food prices go up. Of course, the market found uses, other than sugar, for cheap corn, and those things go up in price as well (meat, for instance).

So we started with: Help out the sugar farmers. Good idea, I guess.

And we ended up with: Help out Con-Agra and ADM, at the expense of the rest of us. More expensive food, more taxes to pay for the subsidies, lots of wasted energy making corn into fuel (which it's not that well suited to). Wasted energy is usually related to pollution, it seems like, so throw environmental problems into the pile.

We get a "biofuel" that doesn't make much environmental sense, because it's a result of a bunch of market distortions, and there's no incentive for anyone in the process to help the environment. You can't expect a fuel designed to rake in subsidies to be very effective at doing other stuff. Take out the subsidies and mandates, and corn ethanol probably falls flat. Other crops might make sense, but they don't have the taxpayer backing, so they don't get to compete.

Incentives created with good intentions led to bad results. An attempt to insulate people from reality turned out to cause bad results. Amazing .

How about instead:
Tell the sugar farmers that, just like the rest of us, they might have to think about getting a second or different job. Maybe some help for the transition (there's the liberal peeking through), but something that makes it clear that they'll have to learn to deal with market forces.

Eliminate trade barriers on sugar (to the extent that foreign producers are competing fairly) and sugar products including ethanol. This would allow producers who can efficiently make biofuel (sugarcane producers, for instance) to compete in a reasonably free market with other fuel producers. Farm ground that was in corn production to get subsidies, now gets to respond to market prices, and keep food prices realistic. (Not necessarily lower, mind you, the market would have sort that part out.)

Set taxes on fuels to recover the costs externalized on society by the manufacturers. Keeping shipping lanes open with a Navy carrier group, for instance, should be included in the price of (at least imported) oil. Waterway cleanup and restoration costs should probably be paid for by ethanol users if ethanol production is causing the damage (with fertilizer and pesticide residues, for instance).

Stand back and let the market allocate resources and find prices. Markets are good at that. If weird things happen, figure out which incentives are causing them and manipulate those incentives carefully.

Money in politics makes this more difficult, I think.

I can't wait until I can get back out in the garage and tinker with stuff...being laid up makes me think about stuff that makes me grumpy.

[diesel_john]

fjasper, I hope your feeling better too.
I notice when I read something, i see only what I want to see. And i hear only what i want to hear. And the person next to me hears something totally different.

But, i can't think of job in this country that isn't subsided by the government. The government does pay part of the crop insurance premium. It's less expensive to do that than pay for all the natural disasters to crops around the country every year. But, the main reason the government subsidizes agricultural is for control. Agricultural is considered a matter of national security. And the government feels they need to control it.
Its been 25 years since the gov. paid farmers not to farm. That is over.
Our ag. industry is one of the most efficient industries on the planet. Even through a recession we didn't starve. For 8 bucks we can buy a box of oats from Sam's that we can live on for a month. Is it fun, no, but compared to the rest of the world...

Ethanol and biodiesel are holding down the prices of gasoline and diesel. When you buy a blend your getting the 90% cheaper because of the 10% ethanol. Our fuel is half the price, than most of the world. There are so called studies that show that it takes 2.5 gallons of gasoline energy equivalent to get 1 gallon to the pump. And 2.2 gallons of ethanol energy equivalent to get 1 gallon to the pump. How? The sun doesn't add energy to the finite supply of gasoline. Either way if an engine burns at 30% efficiency that means we are actually only getting 12% out of the total energy. Of course after we make ethanol, the byproduct, brewers grain or whey is an excellent source of protein for feed.
Why the horsepower race in the automotive sector right now, I have no idea, other than people have too much money, fuel is too cheap, and the fuel quality is too good for high performance engines. As much as i hate government how about a heavy tax on horsepower.
But we have bigger fish to fry, China is going to own our country and they consider us to be their enemies...
Thank the lucky stars that we have agriculture to slow the trade deficient.

[abogart]

Originally Posted by fjasper

I don't know all the details, but they've been working on a lead-free fuel for aviation use for a long time. It's apparently a difficult technical problem, due to the various requirements of avgas.

You pretty much nailed it fjasper.

The main reason that most general aviation engines require leaded fuel is for knock protection at the various air densities that the engines operate at, the constant high engine loads, and the varying fuel ratios used. Detonation is most likely to occur at low altitudes and high engine load, such as during takeoff and climbout, which are usually performed at full-throttle. This would be a very bad time for any loss of power or mechanical failure due to detonation. Constant-speed propellers and turbocharging further complicate matters by adding additional cylinder pressure at lower engine speeds, both on the ground and in the air. Vapor-lock in the fuel lines is also a problem remedied by the TEL additive.

The Piper Warriors we have at the airport for flight training have Lycoming O-320 160hp, 4 cylinder, naturally-aspirated engines, requiring 100LL. I haven't seen many planes that run 80/87, but if they did they would be out of luck, because all of the FBO's that I know of only carry 100LL and Jet-A, unless you want to land on a grass strip and buy some street-grade fuel from farmer Joe's 55 gal drum. It is interesting to note that even the 100LL engines only run a compression ratio of 9:1, while the 80/87 aviation engines run around 7:1, much lower than any automotive engine that I can think of.

The primary thing with aircraft is reliability. Any detonation in flight is a bad thing. Any possible factor that could adversely affect engine operation or cause engine damage is simply unacceptable in an aircraft, mainly for safety reasons. If somebody hammers the gas in their car and blows a piston in their engine due to detonation on the ground, they just pull over and get it towed to the nearest garage. In the air, engine failures are much more dangerous, which is why there are many built-in redundancies such as multiple magnetos and spark plugs, mechanical and electric fuel pumps, multiple power systems, etc. It's basically the fact that they have been very reliable running 100LL up to this point, and any change that might adversely affect engine performance is generally frowned upon without very scrutinous consideration and extensive testing. Let me tell you, when an engine starts acting up in flight, it gets your attention VERY fast.

100LL normally contains 1.2 to 2 grams of lead per gallon, while 100/130 can contain up to 4 grams per gallon, hence the designation "low-lead". Many aircraft are still produced to this day requiring 100LL or 100/130.

Okay, enough of my aviation babble, now back to your regularly scheduled programming...

[fjasper]

I like aviation babble...this last weekend I actually pushed the 170 out of the hangar, washed it, and pulled out the seats in preparation for installing the new carpet. The battery was dead, but I hand-propped it and it fired up on the second blade, after sitting for a year. Airplane engines are amazing.

The C-145 runs on mogas, and I fuel it by hand with cans when it's at the home airport, then get 100LL when I stop elsewhere for fuel. The few times I've seen mogas for sale at an airport, it's been about the same price as 100LL. It seems like the engine runs a little cooler on 100LL.

I pencilled it out, and it looks like it's going to cost me $1 a mile to run the 170 this year, so I probably won't be putting on a lot of hours. I've been considering putting on a pitchier prop and some fairings to see if I can get a little better economy out of it, but I'm not sure coroplast and duct tape would hold up very well.

[abogart]

Originally Posted by fjasper

I've been considering putting on a pitchier prop and some fairings to see if I can get a little better economy out of it, but I'm not sure coroplast and duct tape would hold up very well.

Well it's nice to meet a fellow pilot here , I am currently in the process of studying for my PPL checkride, so I can't say that I have much experience, but all of the FAA-mandated information is still fresh on the brain. Maybe we should round up the pilots on here and start up an aviation thread.

I know if I owned a plane that I used primarily for x/country flights, I would definitely have a cruise prop on it. The economy cruise charts for the Warrior say that wheel fairings add 7 kts at cruise speed, the difference between 110 kts and 117 kts, I'd take it. And my guess is that 100LL can be safely leaned a little more at cruise than mogas.

I've never actually seen somebody hand-prop a plane... but I have to say that the 2nd try is definitely good! The Warriors don't like to start even with the electric starter.