Alcohol Separation System

Interesting!

http://portablefuelsystems.com/AlcoholSeparator.htm

Claims to separate the ethanol from mogas. Anyone have any information on this? PIREPS?

Anyone going to Copperstate that can check this out first hand?

I guesstimate it would take me about 4 years of flying to cover the purchase cost. Too bad you can't drink the removed ethanol! *grin*

-Dj

It's been discussed many times. E10 fuel without the ethanol is not good fuel - it's fuel base stock with poor detonation/octane performance.

airguy said:

It's been discussed many times. E10 fuel without the ethanol is not good fuel - it's fuel base stock with poor detonation/octane performance.

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Correct. Ethanol has an octane rating of about 115.... so any ethanol removed would need to be replaced with a volume of a high-octane component like non-oxygenated racing fuel in the appropriate quantity to bring the octane up to spec..... else the user risks detonation in the cylinder(s) from the non-spec de-oxygenated fuel...

They claim starting with 90.8 octane and end up with 89.5 when done.
Would love to have someone talk to them in person and get more details on exactly how they are accomplishing this.

-Dj

Test your local fuel supplier first.

I have found that around Charlotte much of the fuel does not contain that garbage. Also, the one ethanol plant in NC closed last fall, so the cost of it is hopefully driving ethanol towards extinction.

Non ethanol fuel at airports and other places....

TexasRV8r said:

Correct. Ethanol has an octane rating of about 115.... so any ethanol removed would need to be replaced with a volume of a high-octane component like non-oxygenated racing fuel in the appropriate quantity to bring the octane up to spec..... else the user risks detonation in the cylinder(s) from the non-spec de-oxygenated fuel...

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It is my understanding ethanol is added at distribution centers just before the fuel is loaded on tanker trucks for delivery because alcohol is corrosive to pipe lines.

Locally, 93 octane fuel (so designated) without ethanol is being sold and delivered by a co-op if one has a storage capacity of 100 gallons or more. Is that fuel 93 octane?

What about FBO's that sell mogas without ethanol - some 87, some 91 or 93. Where do they get the fuel and is it de-rated because of no ethanol?

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information on this subject.

According to their website, they started with 90.8 octane, and ended up
with 89.5 when they were done.

Some simple calculations come out pretty close to that:

91 octane fuel is made up of 10% ethanol which is 115 octane, and 90%
base fuel of some octane value X.

9/10(X) + 1/10(115) = 91 octane

Solving for X = ((91 - 1/10(115))(10))/9 = 88.33 octane

Anyone on here happen to work in the petroleum industry and can verify if this really will work?

The other question is what to do with the removed ethanol/water mix that is left over? How to dispose of it, or what other use does it have?

Here is a reply I got from the company:

The process does require two 5-gallon buckets that are provided by the user. One bucket has at least four gallons of clean water in it. The other bucket is the drain bucket. You simply put the hoses in the respective buckets and the system (under software control) will draw the water in and do the ?washing? using a multi-stage/multi-pass algorithm that was developed over many months.

We are planning to have an ?add-on? version for people with existing fuel deliver systems. There has been a lot of interest, and our software was developed with that exact scenario in mind. All of the ?guts? of this system are contained in, quite literally a ?black-box?, and lend itself well to adding on to varying systems.

Thanks again for your interest! If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.

Nick Myers
Vice President/CTO
Use our A-S-S to Fix Your Gas!
(480) 639-3140
[email protected]
www.PortableFuelSystems.com

octane

In the sixties there were three different grades of avgas. 80 octane, 93octane???(or something close to 93) and 100/130. This was before 100low lead. IIRC the 0 320 lyc 150 hp or less was rated for 80 octane, the 160 hp and 0 360 180 hp for 93 octane. I would think the low compression Lycs would be fine with the auto fuel with ethanol removed, but not the high compression.

Octane impact

deej said:

9/10(X) + 1/10(115) = 91 octane

Solving for X = ((91 - 1/10(115))(10))/9 = 88.33 octane

Anyone on here happen to work in the petroleum industry and can verify if this really will work?

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When working with fuels, don't assume relationships are linear. That said, rule of thumb for blenders- adding 10 percent ethanol to gasoline bumps octane about 2 points, a bit more when added to low octane, and bit less to the old premium we used to see at 92-93 octane. I don't have the data handy, but the rule of thumb would likely have come from seeing the results of substantial numbers of ASTM octane tests.

We had a local retailer claiming 95 octane mogas up until a few years ago. We don't see that now because the fuel (RFG) comes from the refinery assuming it will get the octane bump from ethanol addition at the rack.

As far as the business model, selling a device known to create a by-product that has no practical method of disposal, seems like the cart is in front of the horse.

Good News!

A little side drift here but this may be of interest to the mogas users.
Congress voted against renewing the ethanol subsidy (6BillionDollars per year) for various reasons
too political to get into it here.
It may not be long before you will be able to get ethanol free mogas again and you won't need that separation contraption.

In Oregon there is a lot of places to buy clear gas.

N427EF said:

A little side drift here but this may be of interest to the mogas users.
Congress voted against renewing the ethanol subsidy (6BillionDollars per year) for various reasons
too political to get into it here.
It may not be long before you will be able to get ethanol free mogas again and you won't need that separation contraption.

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If only it were that simple.

While it's true that Congress voted to stop the ethanol subsidy, the EPA is still requiring the use of the ethanol. The only thing that changes is that your tax dollars are no longer subsidizing the cost of the ethanol, which means your per-gallon price at the pump will go up as they pass that cost to the consumer. Either way we still end up paying for it - now it will be at the pump instead of April 15.

Typically they use an 84 octane blend stock and add the ethanol to just barely get it to 87

A primer on Ethanol in Mogas

I thought I might throw in on the subject of ethanol in motor gasoline. This is a subject that I have quite a bit of experience in.

The legislative act that drives today's use of ethanol is known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). This was enacted originally as part of the 2005 Energy Bill and went into effect on September 1, 2007. Shortly thereafter congress (not EPA) then passed the 2007 Energy Bill known as the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) and with it a much more aggressive/advanced standard commonly referred to in the industry as RFS2. EPA administers the rule, but Congress dreamed this stuff up.

The RFS serves as a mandate, requiring producers of petroleum products (ie. refiners like ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Valero, Chevron, BP, etc.) to utilize renewable fuels in their products. Each must use their pro-rata share, or acquire credits from someone who has exceeded the minimum. Credits are a whole other subject that I can bore you with another day.

Unfortunately, there is lots of misinformation in the marketplace about ethanol, driven primarily by the various special interests groups and of course the political winds of the time. For instances, you may be surprised to learn that there is actually no mandate for the specific use of corn ethanol. In fact, the standard can be met without using any corn ethanol. Instead the refiner would use something like biodiesel and/or ethanol derived from waste (like off-spec beer or soft drinks).

From a practical standpoint, however, corn ethanol is the renewable fuel of choice. This is for a number of various reasons, some of which have been alluded to by other contributors in this thread. The major factors driving corn ethanol today are a high blend octane value, a technical matter known as the 1 psi RVP waiver (which gives refiners more economic incentive to blend) and an infrastructure that now depends on ethanol in order to finish the sub-grade (low octane) gasoline that is now being transported in virtually every US pipeline.

Here is another fallacy - Refiners only blend as much ethanol as they are mandated to do. In fact, since 2007 refiners have blended far more ethanol than the mandated amounts. Why? Economics of course. However, this may change now that the tax credit, known as VEETC has expired - but I wouldn't bet my money on that.

Now for some perspective. The 2012 standard requires the use of 15.2 Billion gallons of renewable fuel - all but about 1 billion gallons of it will be ethanol. This represents roughly 10% of the US fuel consumption. Congress, through EISA, requires an ever increasing volume of renewable fuel through the year 2022. As the regulations exist today, 36 billion gallons of ethanol will be blended into gasoline and diesel fuels by the year 2022. Stated another way, you can expect the use of ethanol to more than double in the next 10 years.

There is virtually no chance that ethanol will be going away anytime in the near future - at least not while I am flying. Ethanol blended with gasoline works well in modern fuel injected / electronic ignition automobile engines. The common airplane engine is simply not designed for the use of the gasoline that is commonly available at the pump. Even if you can get clear gasoline (no ethanol blended) today, chances are you will not be able to in the future. And worse yet, you really don't know if you are really getting clear gasoline or not. There is no easy way to visually distinguish one from another at the pump. You are completely relying on what the FBO or service station attendant is telling you. The cost of an engine is just not worth the chance to me.

Now for a little background. It just so happens that I am a chemical engineer and I have been in the refining / motor fuel industry for over 25 years - working in this very area. Hope I haven't bored anyone to the point of tears, but I do think it is important to consider all of the information before making a critical decision about the fuel you put in your plane.

All the Best,

Clayton

Clayton said:

You are completely relying on what the FBO or service station attendant is telling you. The cost of an engine is just not worth the chance to me.

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Like David, I live in Missouri. To the best of my knowledge there are still places where ethanol free fuel is available. I have a friend that tests using a clear container with some water. If the fuel doesn't absorb some of the water it is believed to be alcohol free. Is this an accurate test to determine if alcohol is present? As you point out the attendant probably doesn't provide the real story.

Testing for Ethanol in Gasoline

DaAV8R said:

Like David, I live in Missouri. To the best of my knowledge there are still places where ethanol free fuel is available. I have a friend that tests using a clear container with some water. If the fuel doesn't absorb some of the water it is believed to be alcohol free. Is this an accurate test to determine if alcohol is present? As you point out the attendant probably doesn't provide the real story.

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Robert,

There is a way to test for ethanol in the gasoline. Due to ethanol's affinity for water, you simply supersaturate the sample with water and read off the percentage of ethanol in the gasoline solution. In other words, put some water in a graduated cylinder, fill with gasoline, shake, read results. This is an accurate test method.

A test kit is required and it takes about 10 minutes. EAA actually offers some information on the matter, as well as a test kit for purchase. Here is the link:
ww.eaa.org/autofuel/autogas/test_kit.asp

You can also see a test done (slightly different test apparatus) on a YouTube video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsSQSuCiUjE

Keep in mind that gasoline is supplied to these stations by various suppliers. Just because they sell under one brand does not mean that you are getting gasoline solely from that refiner. For instance, you may be purchasing from an Exxon station and receiving gasoline supplied by a Conoco terminal. The next day it could be supplied by a Shell terminal. My point is that if you do use MoGas that you would want to test every time you make a purchase of MoGas, even from the same station / FBO.

All the Best,

Clayton

Clayton said:

The common airplane engine is simply not designed for the use of the gasoline that is commonly available at the pump. All the Best,

Clayton

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Gosh I had better stop using it in my IO360 then...oops 400 hours too late..

Actually Clayton your point has merit as far as the mechanical fuel pump and carb go..Thats partly why I got rid of both of them, the Lycoming engine itself really doesn't care.

For me it was a case of having to burn was was available on every street corner cus I was not prepared to pay the $1.60 a gallon premium for 100LL at airport.

Cheers

Frank

frankh said:

I was not prepared to pay the $1.60 a gallon premium for 100LL at airport.

Cheers

Frank

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Same here - but $2/gallon difference.

If you get rid of the ethanol-intolerant components in the fuel system, the engine doesn't care (beyond the btu/gallon requirements of course).