AGE85 or Ethanol

[avee8tor]

Guys,

Any thoughts on what will replace 100LL. I heard about AGE85 having good results but do not know if this is available yet.

Avee8tor RV-10

[dtw_rv6]

I doubt we'll see the demise of 100LL soon, but I've been wondering lately how to go about making a fuel system safe for "oxygenated" fuel (read: contains ethanol).

I'm mainly concerned about the affects of alcohol on the various seals in the fuel injection and lines. Does anyone have specifics on this?

Don

[danielhv]

while this is not an issue for me yet, i will one day have to put an engine in this plane... id like to see something that is compatable with 100LL and something else thats redily available...

[airguy]

Originally Posted by dtw_rv6

I doubt we'll see the demise of 100LL soon, but I've been wondering lately how to go about making a fuel system safe for "oxygenated" fuel (read: contains ethanol).

I'm mainly concerned about the affects of alcohol on the various seals in the fuel injection and lines. Does anyone have specifics on this?

Don

It's highly unlikely you'll find accurate information on the web about this, due to the high liability factor involved.

It is possible, but it's going to be very difficult to find out how. I would simply point out that automobiles drive millions of miles every day with ethanol fuel without issues. One would do well to look at the methods and materials they use for their fuel systems.

[Bob Brown]

Only thing I've noticed since we "got switched" to 10% ethanol fuel in Oregon is an 8-10% loss of mileage in all our vehicles. That might be something to check on in our aircraft...a 10% loss of range is fairly significant when you can't just run down the street for fuel.

[RScott]

I have had the same experience as Bob--loss of mileage. Went to Colorado to pick up my engine and none of the other states besides Oregon had ethanol. Got 14% lower mileage on Oregon gas with 10% ethanol and that despite the fact that the freeway speed limit in Oregon is 65, while in other states it was 70 or 75. Checking my records for previous years when we had a seasonal mandate for ethanol, it looks like I usually lost more like 10%. Unfortunately, we don't know what the mileage impact on the national fleet is--it hasn't been studied.

It would be pretty stupid to add 10% ethanol and lose 10% mileage.

In the news, it is evident there is growing dissatisfaction with ethanol as people starve while we grow food for fuel. Using food for fuel was recently called a "crime against humanity" by a World Food Bank official. There are environmental issues, the energy balance is still questionable, our ability to get significant relief from imported oil is limited (replacing 10% of our fuel with ethanol would require diverting 1/3 of our cropland to fuel production) and other reasons may get us off the alcohol kick in a few years.

[fliier]

One website discussing the merits of AGE-85 indicates the energy from AVGAS is 112,200 BTU/gal vs 88.2 BTU/gal for AGE-85, or a 21% decrease. AGE-85 is 80-90% alchohol

See http://www.age85.org/Research.htm

The website is interesting in that it discusses the pro's and con's of alchohol, though it definitely has a pro-alchohol bias.

I would suspect the decrease in range per gallon is proportional, though I don't know if that relationship is linear. . . I don't know if energy density translates directly to range.

When I reviewed the manufacturers website for the Flamemaster product that Van's sells in place of Pro-seal, it indicated a high resistance to alchohol.

One thing you could do during the building phase is to add the Safe-Air extended tanks, or at least make provision to add them later on. These would give you an additional 20% or so fuel capacity.

John Allen

[Bob Brown]

I burn 100LL for now, so its not an issue, but since I'm a big guy, adding extended tanks would not by a solution for decreased range...its a weight problem, not a volume problem. 10% of 42 gallons of fuel would equal 25 lbs of lost useful load...

[Garage Guy]

Originally Posted by avee8tor

Any thoughts on what will replace 100LL. I heard about AGE85 having good results but do not know if this is available yet.

Consortium out of South Dakota State did a lot of AGE-85 development in the late 90's but they don't seem to have done anything in the last couple of years. See http://www.age85.org

One thing that came out of their early work was Texas Skyway's STC SA09530SC to convert a O-470-U to run AGE-85. Interestingly, this required very few changes: mainly making sure the fuel bladders are nitrile rubber, and installing 20% larger jets in the carburetor. They put 1000 hours on their test engine in a C-180 with no problems.

So what is the problem? Apparently FAA doesn't want to certify engines to run AGE-85 anymore. And without widespread FAA certification, producers aren't going to make AGE-85. So here we are.

Note that a number of things make AGE-85 issues distinct from issues around ethanol-blended automotive gasoline, even E-85, though they both have ethanol in them.

[leeschaumberg]

As time passes LL100 Aircraft fuel will become a sad way to go. It will go up in price and then ALL lead will become illegal. So this only leaves one fuel for piston aircraft. Guess which one?