TOPIC: Article about ethanol in boat motors

Pretty interesting article from a central New York state source...

blog.syracuse.com/outdoors/2011/02/ethanol_and_boat_show.html

frank, lucky for you . you can still get ethanol free gas in albany. nowhere in jersey. a lot in pennsy but nowhere near me.what brand of stabilizer do you use. i've never used it except for last year when i stored gas over the winter.

frank,thanks,that explained it ,so that even i could understand it,lol,john

vuyosevich wrote:

frank, lucky for you . you can still get ethanol free gas in albany. nowhere in jersey. a lot in pennsy but nowhere near me.what brand of stabilizer do you use. i've never used it except for last year when i stored gas over the winter.

Ethanol-free gas is out of my league if I want to be boating every weekend Ron. As it is, cnn.com has a story today about how we can expect $4/gal gas soon. ( finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/18/here-comes-4-gasoline/ ) That would be $3.85 for you guys in Jersey, $4.20 for us suckers in NY. This is gonna kill my summer. The only thing I can do about it is take the hot rod off the road.

Actually I plan on doing that anyways. Gonna tear it apart, get the chassis and some miscellaneous chassis stuff powder coated, and paint the body. It will probably be off the road for 2-5 years, just depends on $. Needs tires ($1200), new rear wheels ($600), jet coated headers ($800), etc. etc.

I use Sta-bil's Marine Ethanol Treatment in my gas, a bit over an ounce every 6 gallon fill-up. Plus, I think you know, I run synthetic marine 2 cycle oil (Pennzoil brand) too, and usually a tad more each tankful than I need.

John, I posted that article because it explains this stuff in every day language. What you never hear is the screwy energy budget for ethanol. Oh yeah, home grown, whippee. They till the fields with diesel tractors, plant the corn with diesel tractors, apply herbicides and pesticides with diesel tractors, harvest with diesel tractors, haul it to wherever it gets made into ethanol with diesel tractors, then the process of making ethanol is very energy intensive. I'd rather keep the corn for people and livestock, and keep food prices down. Ethanol is just stupid in my book, but that's my opinion.

Frank

wonder why they don't use ethanol in they're tractors.

The whole thing drives me nuts Ron. They knew when they started pushing it that it was a very inefficient energy equation, i.e., it takes a lot of energy to make it, but it was politics as usual, and it still is. All it's done is cause the rest of us trouble!

Frank

In all fairness to oxygenated fuel, it does burn cleaner. We use to have emission testing here. Not needed anymore. If you get out of town you can by regular without ethanol. I have a station about a mile from home that has premium non-oxiginated, at over $5. And Ron the tractors are diesel, They use bio-diesel. I have run ethanol without any problem, but you need to adjust your carb. we do need to get away from corn-based Ethanol. It's raising the cost of everything we eat.

Here in Wisconsin the Kwik Trip chain of gas stations sells premium that is ethanol free. It costs about 20 cents more, but the way I look at it what else can I do with a 48 year old motor. I use stabilizer also. The old girl likes to drink, so by the time you get the gas and oil and stabilizer it is getting kind of pricey. The joys of our addiction!
Bill

HOW TO REMOVE ETHANOL FROM GASOLENE


One way of removing ethanol is to mix water with the fuel, and let it sit for a while. The ethanol would combine with water, then you drain both off (water and the ethanol) , (along with any other soluble compounds in the fuel). Then you will then need to bring the octane back up you would add 1/2 to 1&1/2 oz of Tolunene or Xylene per 4 Gal of the ethanol free mix (Home Depot or any paint store)

I use a 5 Gal plastic water jug ( the kind that years ago were glass and we made wine in them), I add 2 1/2 Qt of water and 4 gal of fuel. I shake well and let sit for 10 to 15 min (when warm outside however being it is getting cold I may have to let sit longer) One will see that the water line went up to about 3 quarts after shaking, this difference is the ethanol mixing with the water.

I then siphon off the gas being careful to leave about 1/2 inch of fuel on top of the water. I will siphon this off into another can and add to my next shake up (yes I am Cheap)

My brother in law that is a chem for Exxon is the one that taught me how to do this. I have found that my gas stays fresher and I have of yet had any problems with the water in the fuel. It is a lot cheaper the the avgas 100LL that I was buying...( I did say that I was cheap)

Remind me to never fly with a guy that puts water in his gas.

A good story;
A couple years back we took the motorhome to Deadwood. We stopped at Mitchel and filled up. They had "Premium", "Regular". and "Special Regular". Well the special stuff was a couple cents cheaper, so being I'm cheap too, I went for the special. It was 110 degrease going across the Badlands, and the motorhome wouldn't run. we stopped at a small town to let it cool down, and talked to a guy who laughed and said "you must have bought the Special Regular" yep, "well special has Ethanol and it vapor-locks at high temps. Put a gallon of diesel in" So after some thought I put two gallons in. Took right off and ran great. Unfortunately when we got to Deadwood they had a forest fire and we had to turn around and come back home.

When Island hopping ALL of my fuel goes through a chamois in a funnel

Once fuel hits it water will not go though it...slows thing down fueling ....but better then going down slow

There is still ethanol free gas available at the marina here, but it's at least $2.50 a gallon higher $ than the stuff at the gas stations. Like Frank and the expert in the article said, I add stabilizer to every tank, and at just over $50 the fuel filter / water separator seemed like a good investment too. (Probably not approved for aviation use, but I haven't had a minute's trouble in the boat, knock on wood.)

That's the only thing that bugs me Mark, is I don't have a fuel filter of any kind. Last season I figure I ran about 200 gallons of premium fuel through that motor with no filter. Having portable tanks makes me wonder how I could do one. Any ideas?

Frank

I run portable tanks too, you just have to find a spot to mount the ff/ws up under the splashwell somewhere. Spliced into the fuel line after the primer bulb just before it goes out to the motor, so you can pump the primer to fill the unit first time. My buddy Bob also put one on his Lone Star Malibu lummie, I think his is mounted to the inside of the transom. I like this unit so you can see in the bowl if there is water accumulating, and just drain it. The filter part is good for a full season, assuming you don't get a tank full of trash in there.

How do you connect from your tank line to the ff/ws Mark? I'm sure I could figure something out, but why reinvent the wheel?

Frank

The big culprit with ethanol is what it does to fiberglass and rubber. It reacts on a molecular level and softens both, which can create deposits that can ruin the engine. Where the most damage seems to occur is in boats with built in fiberglass gas tanks. I'm not sure what happens in an ethanol/metal reaction. That is something with very little coverage that I could find.

One of the first things I did on the Aqua Ray was to change all of the hoses, floats, etc in the engine to ethanol resistant materials. I also use plastic tanks (portable) and ethanol resistant hoses and of course use Sta-Bil. With that, what advantage would a water separator give me beyond protection against bad gas? Ironically, the cure for bad gas from a gas station has always been ethanol (Dry-Gas).

As far as cost of producing ethanol it takes .74 BTU of energy to create 1 BTU of ethanol (vs 1.23:1 for traditional crude oil to gasoline, 2:1 for oil sands and 3:1 for oil shale.) They are also working on what is called Cellulose Ethanol which can be made from corn stalks and similar by-products, which would not impact the food supply.

Interesting energy efficiencies you got there. I have never seen or heard of that efficient a ratio for ethanol. I googled "ethanol energy efficiency" and this was the 3rd entry down:

www.carbohydrateeconomy.org/library/admin/uploadedfiles/How_Much_Energy_Does_it_Take_to_Make_a_Gallon_.html

It's obvious that the efficiency of ethanol is all over the place!

Frank

We just did some work to certify the tanker that I operate to haul Ethanol- We're all ready to carry it, we just need to find someone who needs it 2.5 - 3 million gallons at a time, there just isn't such a customer in the region at the moment.

I know, however, in the near future there will be- And I'm not looking forward to hauling it. I can only IMAGINE what it is going to do to the packing and seals in my cargo valves.

As for the efficiency of Ethanol, the numbers that you find ARE all over the board. You can 'tweak' the numbers to make your case look better. All I know is it makes my Doritos more expensive. Grrr.