(Article) The Feds Plan To Start Diluting Gasoline (E15)This May

[Squatch]

Its all been E10 up here for over a decade. Even premium grades but I think they only made the switch about 3 years ago.

Honestly the whole ethanol "gonna wrek yer engun" thing is really overrated. Take care of your kit. When its off season, drain the fuel out of it. If you don't have an off season, only put in the fuel you're intending to use to do the job if theres that much of a time gap between uses.

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[Mavster Mechanic]

Ethanol is hydrostatic I think the word is.
Ethanol collects water from condensation,
It stores poorly. But Star Tron will hold it for two years.
Ethanol gas has a slower,
‘Flame propagation’ small engines don’t like that.

Look. I like you. But no, that is not the word. And that's not even the concept.

"hygroscopic" is the word.

Hygroscopic refers to
substances, often dry powders or liquids, that readily attract and absorb water vapor from the surrounding environment.

"Concentrated sulfuric acid, alcohols (like ethanol), and salts (e.g., sodium chloride) are strongly hygroscopic and used for drying or in moisture-sensitive applications.

Ethanol makes things drier. Not wetter.
Most people get that backwards.
For 125 years people have been purposefully adding alcohols to fuel, especially in winter, to keep them from freezing. To keep fuel lines from icing up.

Gas and water do not mix.
Water separates from gasoline.
Water does not separate from ethanol.

And water does not separate from a gas-ethanol-water mixture in any realistic proportions you will encounter. You will need more than a gallon of water in your tank to overwhelm the ethanol. Who does that???? Boats maybe.

Pro Tip: Don't use your Maverick as a boat.

Ever have a bourbon, Scotch, whisky, rum, or any distilled spirit? They are usually more than 50% water! How long does it take for the water to settle out of your whisky? Answer: infinity. It does not separate.

The beautiful thing about alcohol is it REMOVES WATER FROM YOUR GAS TANKS.

Been marketed that way in cold weather areas for 100+ years.
Example:

Primary ingredient is alcohol.

This product is needed for plain gas.
This product serves no purpose in E10.

 

[Mavster Mechanic]

Slower flame propagation is what gets you a more complete burn and less pollution per stroke.

Small engines like that. Just like big engines.

What small engines without electronic fuel injection don't like is the rich mixture required from ethanol. So usually they run lean when they can't self adjust. It's up to the user to manually richen the mix and most people don't do that.

Gasoline needs 1 part fuel to 14.7 parts air.

Ethanol needs 1 part fuel to 9 parts air.

E10 needs about 1 part fuel to 14.1 parts air.

 

[Cherokee]

The Feds know the higher the E the less MPG thus more Tax , you now fill up more often.

Wisdom.

 

[Cherokee]

Post # 18,
Wisdom,

I’ll never keep that straight in my head but thanks.

 

[MXGOLF]

I am lucky there is two gas stations somewhat close the sell NE gas. I use that for my motorcycle and lawn mower and Honda generator. I did experiment with my 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid and it got way better gas mileage with NE gas then the ethanol gas. I have not tried that experiment with my Hybrid Maverick but am thinking of trying it. I am on my first tank of gas that was free from the stealership. I just thought I would throw in my two cents worth in this subject. I had a very good friend that made a living on rebuilding carburetors for motorcycles due to the ethanol eating the seals away. The government is using smoke and mirrors to say ethanol is OK when it just makes more pollution in my estimation.

 

[kevinmccune]

I've seen that information and believe it to be true. Where I'm at I can get:

87 E0
87 E10
88 E15
91 E0
91 E10
93 E0


I normally try to get the 87 E10 for my vehicles and have no issues with it. I run the 87 E0 in my small engines, and use the 91 E0 in my dirt bike.

My beef is that it seems stations are starting to replace 87 E10 with 88 octane and not labeling the ethanol content.

Edit: The thing that seems odd to me is we always have 88 E15 available, year round.
E40 and E85 are also available, but I'm not sure of the octane ratings they put on them.

the trouble is that taxpayer also subdizes "big AG" for corn ethanol,the only place ialcohol really makes sense is in Brazil,yes its a good fuel and have used 88 in my Maverick without problem,the only place the higher percentage blends make sense is in very high compression engines,one guys Camaro that would run 9's would average 13 mpg on the highway with E85( the requirement for this class was you had to drive to the meet,alcohol is cleaner burning,the newer smell of interstate is you guessed it alcohol( back in the day you could tell Phllips 66 gas by its smell combusted,I noticed all the state vehicles had this smell and that's what they ran)

 

[kevinmccune]

I am lucky there is two gas stations somewhat close the sell NE gas. I use that for my motorcycle and lawn mower and Honda generator. I did experiment with my 2013 Ford Fusion Hybrid and it got way better gas mileage with NE gas then the ethanol gas. I have not tried that experiment with my Hybrid Maverick but am thinking of trying it. I am on my first tank of gas that was free from the stealership. I just thought I would throw in my two cents worth in this subject. I had a very good friend that made a living on rebuilding carburetors for motorcycles due to the ethanol eating the seals away. The government is using smoke and mirrors to say ethanol is OK when it just makes more pollution in my estimation.

strange I can get 35 mpg with my ecoboost running e10,do you think 40 mpg is possible with NE? it would have to be better than that to offset the higher cost of NE fuel and why in the heck is NE fuel more expensive anyway?(I know the taxpayers subsidize the corn ethanol)

 

[Busa789]

the trouble is that taxpayer also subdizes "big AG" for corn ethanol,the only place ialcohol really makes sense is in Brazil,yes its a good fuel and have used 88 in my Maverick without problem,the only place the higher percentage blends make sense is in very high compression engines,one guys Camaro that would run 9's would average 13 mpg on the highway with E85( the requirement for this class was you had to drive to the meet,alcohol is cleaner burning,the newer smell of interstate is you guessed it alcohol( back in the day you could tell Phllips 66 gas by its smell combusted,I noticed all the state vehicles had this smell and that's what they ran)

You can get about any answer you want on the subsidies/value/carbon footprint etc. aspects of renewable fuels and fossil fuels. We have run a Hayabusa with stock 12.5:1 compression on pump E85 and seen notable power increases. For sure it gets less mpg. There are plenty of fuels that have their distinctive odor. I recall pump fuels with MTBE back in the 90's having a distinct smell, and race fuels today with it are the same.

 

[ice445]

Actually, it's pretty darn efficient.

"As of March 27, 2026, corn futures are trading around $4.62 per bushel, remaining relatively stable."

For $4.62 you get:

2.85 gallons of 200 proof ethanol
($1.62 per gallon)

plus

18 pounds of calorie dense, highly nutritious, highly palatable, easy digestible animal feed

plus

0.8 pounds of corn oil.

It takes 22,000 btu of heat to distill one gallon and that gallon contains 76,000 btu of energy. To pump 1 gallon from start to finish uses 0.4 kWh of electricity.

Sure, ethanol has ~70% the energy of gasoline but the modern bio-refinery is very efficient, and Emits pretty much only CO2. Burning ethanol creates CO2 and not much else. Ethanol creates a fraction of the pollution of gasoline.

And before you mention "what about the farmer burning diesel?" It is less than the diesel burned going after crude oil and transporting crude oil and refining crude oil and how much diesel is the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines burning in the middle east right now to get at the oil?

How many people have died fighting over ethanol?

How many beaches have been closed
due to ethanol?

Best you not "go there".

Okay, but you forgot a key detail or two. For one, fertilizer is petroleum based, and they use a hell of a lot of it. Secondly, ethanol falls victim to the same logistic efficiency loss as regular fuels. You have to spend fuel to move fuel, which isnt great with so much lower energy density.

And finally, cropland itself is a finite resource. Soil health is rapidly depleting year after year, and its straight up eroding too. Because we insist on paying farmers to grow this stuff, fields are never allowed to idle and return to nature to increase their longevity. And that's not even touching the effects of the mass amount of pesticides being dumped all over the fields, which also have petroleum based carriers.

It seems pretty wasteful and short sighted to me, but I do like using it for race cars.

 

[dochawk]

Luckily several years ago I bought a battery powered mower. And started doing my own mowing again last year. Not as powerful in tall grass, but it is working out for me.

Go 80 volts!

(ok, it's really 72; everything but 18v and 24v are "peak" rather than "nominal" battery voltage. I.e, the only difference between an 18v and a 20v pack is marketing and deception).

I didn't believe the claim that the 80v Kobalt chainsaw was comparable to a 50cc gas engine; I just hoped it would be sufficient.

Getting it into service, though, it felt the same. On top of that, you don't have the hard vibrations, mixing gas & oil, the exhaust of a 2 stroke, and so forth. And the 4Ah battery lasted longer on a charge than my back is good for, anyway!

But my batteries, the chainsaw, and the weed trimer were stolen in a burglary, leaving me just the mower and the blower.

Since since will no longer sell 80v kobalt in store, and they seem hard to order, I've switched to greenworks (which makes 80v kobalt anyway, it seems). I'll carve out the blocking ridge in the battery cavities so that I can use my new greenworks battery in the remaining ryobi.

 

[Busa789]

Go 80 volts!

(ok, it's really 72; everything but 18v and 24v are "peak" rather than "nominal" battery voltage. I.e, the only difference between an 18v and a 20v pack is marketing and deception).

I didn't believe the claim that the 80v Kobalt chainsaw was comparable to a 50cc gas engine; I just hoped it would be sufficient.

Getting it into service, though, it felt the same. On top of that, you don't have the hard vibrations, mixing gas & oil, the exhaust of a 2 stroke, and so forth. And the 4Ah battery lasted longer on a charge than my back is good for, anyway!

But my batteries, the chainsaw, and the weed trimer were stolen in a burglary, leaving me just the mower and the blower.

Since since will no longer sell 80v kobalt in store, and they seem hard to order, I've switched to greenworks (which makes 80v kobalt anyway, it seems). I'll carve out the blocking ridge in the battery cavities so that I can use my new greenworks battery in the remaining ryobi.

If my gas engine chainsaw and string trimmer were stolen (again) I would go with a Stihl battery saw and trimmer.

 

[Mavster Mechanic]

Okay, but you forgot a key detail or two. For one, fertilizer is petroleum based, and they use a hell of a lot of it. Secondly, ethanol falls victim to the same logistic efficiency loss as regular fuels. You have to spend fuel to move fuel, which isnt great with so much lower energy density.

And finally, cropland itself is a finite resource. Soil health is rapidly depleting year after year, and its straight up eroding too. Because we insist on paying farmers to grow this stuff, fields are never allowed to idle and return to nature to increase their longevity. And that's not even touching the effects of the mass amount of pesticides being dumped all over the fields, which also have petroleum based carriers.

It seems pretty wasteful and short sighted to me, but I do like using it for race cars.

You left out about 100 details. Which is fine.

Let me simplify.

Would you rather:

A) have ethanol bio-refineries on three sides of your house (it's moonshine, you could drink it before it is blended with gasoline)

or

B) oil refineries on three sides of your house

Saying neither isn't an option for purposes of this thread. I'm not asking you to come up with alternatives. I'm
asking you to pick the lesser of these two evils.

P.S. half an ethanol plant is a brewery and half is a distillery. They smell very pleasant if you like that yeasty bakery / brewery smell.

 

[Kali's Ride]

Luckily several years ago I bought a battery powered mower. And started doing my own mowing again last year. Not as powerful in tall grass, but it is working out for me.

And I don't have to worry about gas gumming up over the winter.

I was about to say the same thing. I had a 30 year old Montgomery Ward push mower. Took the weight of the mower on a hill to hold it in place pulling on the rope starter. ...and at least 5 pulls. Bought an electric mower and wow. Easy-to-use and never have to winterize it and worry about it gumming up. Also a few other yard care e-tools as well. We have a EV car, as soon as they make a reasonably priced small pickup truck that gets 400-500 mile per charge I'm in. I installed solar and batteries at my house. I'm so tired of all the hydrocarbon drama.

 

[Mavster Mechanic]

I was about to say the same thing. I had a 30 year old Montgomery Ward push mower. Took the weight of the mower on a hill to hold it in place pulling on the rope starter. ...and at least 5 pulls. Bought an electric mower and wow. Easy-to-use and never have to winterize it and worry about it gumming up. Also a few other yard care e-tools as well. We have a EV car, as soon as they make a reasonably priced small pickup truck that gets 400-500 mile per charge I'm in. I installed solar and batteries at my house. I'm so tired of all the hydrocarbon drama.

Wow.
Are you still in Maine?

Solar in Maine?
If you can do it, anyone can.
What happens when it snows?

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