[T3] E 15 fuel

[Jim Adney]

On 9 Jan 2013 at 7:41, John L. Morgan IV wrote:

> Have you guys seen this?
> Looks like others need our fuel!

> http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/2000862202001/

Wow, whole lotta' hyperventilating goin' on here! A LOT of what their 
so-called expert says is pure hogwash, but there may be a bit of 
truth in there. And that, of course, is how the best lies are 
composed.

I don't think pure Ethanol and gasoline will ever separate, BUT if 
you add some water to the gas, it will sink to the bottom and the 
ethanol will preferentally move to the water. Thus water is required 
to get the 2 to separate, and the degree of separation will depend on 
the amount of water. Now there's commonly some water in most gas, but 
the amount is small enough to be ignored. If there was a large 
amount, the separation would occur in the tanks in the ground, in 
which case you'd probably end up with either gas or water/ethanol in 
your tank.

The comment about reduced octane is probably correct, assuming 
complete separation, but the comment that implies that E15 has only 
1/3 the energy content of pure gas is pure BS.  

On the other hand, there's reasonable doubt that ethanol will ever be 
a good fuel, economically, since it's not clear that we get more than 
1 gallon of ethanol out for every gallon of energy equivalent put 
into the system to produce that gallon.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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