Removing Ethanol from Gasoline

[UFO]

Do you have an explanation or proof you can travel further on 9 gallons of gasoline than 10 gallons of E10? Frankly, that sounds ridiculous.

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by Olympiadis

Nerys, I haven't posted here much but I like your thread and what you are doing so I wanted to jump in.

First I have to say I'd never before tried to imagine the sight of a 380 lb man in a tiny Metro pulling a small trailer. There's just something not so right about that.

Sorry for the long post.

I LIKE long intelligent informative posts and that was definately a good post.

"I can't say that I like your testing methods as they are no-where near controlled enough to give reliable results"

Like or not they are reliable. My commute is "shockingly" reliable and consistent. So much so that until E10 I saw almost NO difference in winter and summer gas (less than a 1.0 to 1.5 mpg change)

I have 496,000 miles on my cherokee. 300,000 or so miles in its current configuration over 275,000+ miles on E0.

I consistently got 21.5 to 22.5 mpg and that was putting 50,000 miles a year on it.

My Fuel Economy on my vehicles is so consistent that I used it as a Repair Tool. when my FE changes I immediately look for the reason as 9 out of 10 times its because "something" just broke or is starting to break.

Alignment. Tire. Bearings. etc.. etc.. My Mechanic always asked how the hell did you know something was wrong? because my FE went down. so SOMETHING was wrong.

pre E10 I found bad wheel bearings LONG before they were ever audible of felt.

One time I lost .75mpg on "average" ie over many tanks. for such a small drop I suspected either a bubble in a tire or a bearing. so after my drive to work I jumped out and went around to each hum with my IR thermometer. Took it to my mechanic (this was before I was doing all my own work) and said that wheel bearing is bad.

He drove it and said no its fine. i said its bad replace it please. When he got it out he was stunned that it was indeed slightly bad and would have failed in another 5 or 10k miles or so. but in that time .75mpg would have cost me a lot more than a $8 bearing.

When you spend $4000 a year in fuel fuel economy changes become important :-) hehe

You can check my ecomodder results with switching back and forth between E10 and E0.

Then I hit SUMMER gas and was hitting 54mpg on E10 MAN I wish I had the time and money to try E0 then I bet I would have busted 60mpg.

but I was out of time and out of money :-) next summer I will definitely do it again. I might be doing it a lot more if PA switches to E15. :-(

For older consumer cars Ethanol seems to have a pretty dramatic effect.

My jeep went from 22mpg to 14-15mpg 18 if I am really careful and use wawa gas (few percent less ethanol)

My van 19mpg to 13mpg 16.5 on the highway now (used to hit 21mpg on the highway)

My minivan really got hit hard. 28mpg to 20mpg if I am really careful and slow way down.

Tank to tank accuracy is really not that important as discrepancies will reveal themselves as trends or lack thereof.

ie if you "underfill" this tank and get an artificially high mpg reading you will have the "effect" of an "overfill" next tank and be artificially low in your mpg reading. IE it averages out.

AS LONG as you do good full fills IE I tend to not fill at less than 400 miles.

My fuel log speaks for itself :-) very very consistent reliable numbers.

NOW with E10 wow mileage can be ALL OVER THE MAP from gas station to gas station. Until E10 I saw absolutely ZERO difference in FE from one stations gas to the next.

now its huge. I absolutely refuse to buy gas from any "no name" gas station if its E10 because some of them are pushing E12 and E13

the car actually starts to audibly and physically run like crap on that stuff (which is why E15 scares the crap out of me)

I am glad to hear about the Octane thing. I was worried I was going to harm my engine if I ran too low an octane level after removing the ethanol.

My only real concern is what is all that OTHER stuff that I am removing when I remove the ethanol. it looks like little white worms or maggots on the separation line between the gas and water/ethanol. (its not living matter of course thats just what it looks like)

I assume I am also removing some of the additives they put in the gas. Will this harm my engine by having those additives removed?

Will the trace amounts of water that is no doubt left behind during my process hurt my engine in the long term?

I need to find some good GLASS containers though the Ethanol aggressively attacks the plastic containers I am using now. I only get about 1.5 to 2 weeks out of them before they degrade to the point where they leak like crazy :-)

[Nerys]

Sure - look at my fuel log and do the math yourself. you don't have to take my word for it.

I was getting 55mpg on the E0 and 46mpg on the E10 (IIRC)

lets do some math.
10 gallons at 46mpg gives me 460 miles
9 gallons at 55mpg gives me 495 miles

thats 35 MORE MILES on a GALLON LESS.

Even at 47mpg thats 470 miles on 10 gallons at 48 480 at 49 thats 490

so with as small as a 5.5mpg difference I can go FURTHER on the 9 gallons without ethanol than the 10 gallons WITH ethanol and I was seeing FAR bigger than 5.5 mpg differences.

and those fills were as perfect as humanly possible. I filled to the top of the neck and measured to a half a cup in accuracy what fuel I put in and I was pushing to nearly 500 miles between fills for those tests !!

Once I find some good glass containers I plan to do more long term testing but right now its very labor intensive.

or if I happen upon enough cash just go BUY a bunch of E0 but to make it worth my while to drive that far for it I need at least $250 worth of fuel and I just don't have that kind of cash.

This is not about energy content. this is about WRONG fuel for the engine.

NOW the following is NOT factually know. this is the current GUESS by me and others online about what is happening and its not my idea.

We suspect that the ethanol is NOT LIGHTING in the cylinder. The gas is. the flame front from the gasoline burning then "burns" the ethanol but its now LATE and you end up with two competing flame fronts out of sync inside the cylinder.

why do we suspect this? someone came on the forum (another forum) with problems using E10 in a 2004 or 2006 Hybrid (the suv one)

he was seeing a nearly 27% drop in fuel economy going to E10 like we were !! he took it to the dealer and the result stunned us.

they fixed his car. he now only saw the expected 4-5% drop in FE. he claims the explanation the dealer tech gave him was that the ignition system was programmed wrong and was not firing a "hot" enough spark to properly burn the ethanol. when the programmed in the correct hotter spark the problem went away.

this is what lead us to believe is a burn problem with the ethanol. IE if I could figure out away to make my metro "spark" hotter it might recover a lot of FE on ethanol.

[Nerys]

Originally Posted by nibs

Thank you Rmay, I agree with what you say, especially re running the fermentation process and distillation in the south.
I think that this desire to increase mileage by not using ethanol is not a progressive step. Is it loosing site of the real objective which imo is using less fossil fuel and creating less pollution?

I have a simple truth that I try to teach people.

Greener is Cheaper. if its not CHEAPER its not GREEN (or its green thats manipulated)

there is only one true way to be "green" and thats to USE LESS and to use that less more efficiently.

If ethanol was sitting in the ground like oil is I could see it being greener than gas. but once you see what it does to our older cars (and buying a new $30,000 car sure as hell is not green or practical) and how much POLLUTION there is in the actual ethanol production process (from the planting growing and harvesting of the corn and the ethanol production itself)

most people flat out IGNORE then entire pollution side of the ethanol itself.

well do you want to BE green or APPEAR to be green?

its many many times dirtier and less green than gasoline is.

even if you ignored 100% of the very significant pollution and resource issues on the ethanol side its STILL only cleaner in the NEWER cars that see a less than 10% drop in fuel economy. for everyone else its STILL dirtier and much much costlier.

All ethanol is, is DOLLARS to corn growers. thats it.

[Niner]

How is ethanol dirtier than fossil fuel? Ethanol is a renewable fuel - the carbon we take out of it came from the corn that was grown, and thus some of it came from the atmosphere. It's closer to a closed system. Fossil fuels are taking carbon out of the ground and releasing it into the air - an almost completely open system.

As far as new vs old vehicles, that may definitely be true. I had a 2001 Ford Ranger that came with the free E85 upgrade (bigger spark plugs and steel fuel lines). I ran E85 fairly often, because there was a station near me and cost was frequently less than 80% of regular gas. After careful measurement (which I haven't preserved and the truck is now in car graveyard) I determined that I would break even in price as long as it was below 80-something percent. So yes, less efficient per gallon, but this was also 85% ethanol, so I'd be surprised if a modern car suffered nearly as much.

[Nerys]

Yeah sure if you only count carbon. Pollution does not equal CARBON. Carbon equals a SMALL TINY PART of pollution.

what percentage of cars are 2001 or newer? I say well less than half.

IF its less efficient per gallon you therefore have to BURN MORE GALLONS producing MORE pollution.

and what happens to all the fresh water and other resources they consume to actually CONVERT the corn to ethanol a resource far more valuable than even oil.

you do not EVER break even on Ethanol. Ever. you break even on TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED ethanol and only if you IGNORE the taxation that makes that "apparent" at the pump break even possible.

I can go 460 miles on 10 gallons of E10 or 495 miles on 9 gallons of E0

do the math. I am now burning MORE GALLONS of gasoline than before and this even includes ignoring the ethanol all together.

its not cleaner. its NOT renewable. its not cheaper. its not green by any stretch of the imagination. At least once you understand the full reality behind ethanol and its effects and consequences.

[UFO]

I see by your data you are convinced, and it is very compelling. But to me it's utterly non-comprehensible. Ethanol is a fuel with 75% of the chemical energy of gasoline. A gallon of ethanol added to your tank should equal more miles, not less. I am not aware of any mechanism that can account for such an effect.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Nerys

IF its less efficient per gallon you therefore have to BURN MORE GALLONS producing MORE pollution.

and what happens to all the fresh water and other resources they consume to actually CONVERT the corn to ethanol a resource far more valuable than even oil.

you do not EVER break even on Ethanol. Ever.

Um, the guys that make hydrous ethanol out of stills and run it in modded cars are breaking a bit better than even and they typically don't use oil to make the ethanol.

It is a fine line between whether ethanol is energy positive or negative, changes in how we produce it, what we produce it from and where we produce it could dramatically change its efficiency of production.

Also only certain cars are really affected by e10 ethanol FE wise. My buick was not affected up to 50% not affected and it was a 98. Other vehicles, primarily dodge and chrysler products seemed to fair less well. Antiques usually hate the stuff but some bigger antique motors slurp it up just the same as regular.

Cheers
Ryan

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by UFO

But to me it's utterly non-comprehensible. Ethanol is a fuel with 75% of the chemical energy of gasoline. I am not aware of any mechanism that can account for such an effect.

My older vehicles that were not tuned for ethanol get terrible FE on e10 because the timing and the o2 values are completely wrong, some older vehicles would sense the o2 value being off and pour in way more fuel than would be necessary and actually go rich.

Stupid but true unfortunately.

[ShadeTreeMech]

....Chrysler started going into the red sometime around the 70s gas crunch.

What type of vehicle will a bankrupt company make?

I regularly work on a 90 dodge B250 van whose idiotic engineering exerts itself every time I attempt to keep it running and on the road, instead of the junkyard I rescued it from 4 years ago.