Marina's - Non ethanol?

[Dave M]

Has anybody heard if Marina's will be exempt from non ethanol gas since its now or will be a state wide mandate.

Dave M

[Kerk]

My understanding. THERE WILL BE NO jUST PLAIN GASOLINE. IT WIIL HAVE THE ETHNOL 10% IN IT. I know from a trip to KY. 2 YRS. ago that I was able to buy gas on and I got an extra 100 miles out of a tank full and that was 75 mph + most of the time. We are saving WHAT! ? JMO

[OCDACTIVE]

My understanding. THERE WILL BE NO jUST PLAIN GASOLINE. IT WIIL HAVE THE ETHNOL 10% IN IT. I know from a trip to KY. 2 YRS. ago that I was able to buy gas on and I got an extra 100 miles out of a tank full and that was 75 mph + most of the time. We are saving WHAT! ? JMO

We are saving the marine manufactoring industry because now we will have to replace fuel pumps, filters and tanks more often.. Have you seen what comes out of them now that there is ethenol? Terrible... :(

[KBoater]

I understand that FL has exempted marinas from the ethanol laws. They are selling regular gas. Last spring I filled up on regular @ $5.00. I not gone south this year because of my health so haven’t burned any of the gas.

[Weekend Pundit]

There is nothing requiring a 10% ethanol content in marine gasoline. In fact, Channel Marine sells Valvtec marine gasoline, which has no ethanol.

Non-ethanol gasolines tend to cost a little more. This is because ethanol boosts octane rating, and without ethanol that boost is gone. Therefore the gasoline has to have more octane or octane equivalent to bring the rating up.

[rick35]

Last year I would fill up on Rte 104 at exit 23 or at the Mobil station in Meredith across from Citizens bank before launching at Brown's. Does anyone know if those gas stations have converted over to E10?

I found an EPA site that identifed that only the southern NH counties were listed as reformulated gas areas. http://www.epa.gov/otaq/rfg/whereyoulive.htm The site has a 2007 date on it but it looks like it is current. That would suggest that ethanol is not required in the other counties. But if the gas companies are delivering only ethanol around the lake it doesn't really matter what the EPA says.

If only ethanol is available is it really worthwhile using an additive? I was checking out marine Sta-Bil and its supposed to help with ethanol effects but it costs about $12 per bottle to treat 100 gallons. Is it worth the money?

Rick

[Smitty1]

FYI Here are 2 products I have heard of that may help with Ethanol issues:


http://www.k100fueltreatment.com/


http://mystarbrite.com/startron/

A friend of mine uses K100 in all his sleds in Winter and in his boat during the Summer.


Smitty

[Wolfeboro_Baja]

Rick, I don't know about you but $12 a bottle to treat 100 gallons of fuel would be cheap insurance, if it works!!

I checked out the K100 website and while they sell three 8-ounce bottles for $25, they don't tell you what the mix ratio is. It would be nice if they'd tell us on the website how much is needed to treat 50 or 100 gals. of fuel.

My biggest problem is, how do you know if any of these products work?? I'm sure if we looked hard enough, we could find people that swear BY it as well as those that swear AT it!! I'd hate to be spending the money, thinking I'm protecting my fuel system, only to find out it was a waste of money or worse yet, find out it made the problem worse! I don't mind spending the money if it works, I just wish there was an independent lab that tested to see if they actually produced the results they claim.

[wifi]

Simple Google search produced this site:
http://www.fuel-testers.com/review_gas_treatment_products.html

They don't seem to believe K100 :)

Lots of reading and interesting info.

[rick35]

It looks like additives may do more damage than what I think I'm trying to prevent. I think I'll just run E10 if that's all I can find and see how it goes. My Merc 135hp 3L I/O doesn't have a water separating filter and I should probably have one installed. I'll continue to use stabil over the winter as that seems to help.

I was hoping that someone from the Meredith area could comment on if the gas stations switched over to E10.

Rick

[kchace]

Rick I sometimes stop at those stations on *my* way to Brown's and I believe I've seen the ethanol stickers on the pumps.

FWIW - I believe the areas/counties listed at the EPA as being 'reformulated gas' are those that HAVE to sell reformulated gas due to measured pollution levels while other areas do not. The problem is that there are only a few distributors and once "most" of the fuel is going to areas that require reformulated gas, its not worth it (or even practical)for them to mix up different batches for different areas and try to keep them all separate.

Ken

[rick35]

Its funny that ethanol is our concern this year while last year gas at the marinas was almost $5 per gallon. I remember the most I paid was $4.749. I had just bought a new boat and I was determined that I was boating no matter what the cost. Fortunately it burned about half as much as my other boat and because we trailer it to get back and forth to Bear Island I usually filled up in town for quite a bit less than at the marina.

Just for the record - I'm happy to pay half as much as last year for ethanol. I'll stop my complaining about ethanol now.

Rick

[topwater]

Rick, all three(3) gas stations at exit 23 in New Hampton have ethanol mixed in with their gas now. My son was telling be about a new product from Sta-bil that is made for any outboard engine that uses gas with ethanol in it. I bought it at NAPA in Meredith.

[butler1227]

Simple Google search produced this site:
http://www.fuel-testers.com/review_gas_treatment_products.html

They don't seem to believe K100 :)

Lots of reading and interesting info.


I ask the company about what fuel testers reveiw said. Here is there response.


Regarding info on fuel testers website.

I don’t really understand the point of the author’s comments. His business is to sell test kits to detect the presence of alcohol in the fuel. By the end of 2010 85% of the gasoline sold in the US will contain ethanol, so he’ll either sell a lot of kits, or be retired to the Bahamas.
My guess is that much of the site is an anti-ethanol, anti-government rant clothed in a few facts.

Anyway, let’s look at the situation. Ethanol is in the fuel as an oxygenate. It replaces MTBE because that was found to be environmentally dangerous. While there are various opinions about making ethanol from corn, and whether that’s an environmental improvement, it is obvious that we are going to see more and more ethanol in our fuels.
The old gasoline formulations would only absorb very minute amounts of water. Basically, if you got any water it wouldn’t go into solution in the fuel , it went to the bottom of the tank. On some small engines you could see the water sitting in the bottom of the bowl under the fuel filter, just in front of the carb. The water did NOT interfere with the octane rating or other properties of the fuel. Now, when phase separation occurs the ethanol+water is at the bottom and low octane fuel sits above it.
Now we have E-10 and E-85. They contain ethanol. Ethanol is chemically an alcohol, a compound containing an extra O and H at the end of the chain. There are hundreds of compounds that are chemically classified as an alcohol. They are used in food products, pharmaceuticals, cleaners, lubricants, and many other products that we come in contact with every day. The physical characteristics and uses vary greatly.
The author has looked at various MSDS sheets and based on the data on those sheets makes some pretty broad statements. Review of the listed ingredients does not tell the whole story. In so far as how the products work unlisted or trade secret ingredients may be more important than the listed ingredients. Further, the mechanism by which ingredients act may well be altered or changed by the unlisted ingredients, or by the processing of the product. Just because we take ingredient A and B and react them with ingredient C and D doesn’t mean that we end up with A+B+C+D. In fact most formulations end up with X.
The author hints that you should never add additional alcohol containing products to E-10 fuels. Under 2+4 he says the product is not suitable for use in alcohol fuels. He implies that the company supplied MSDS gives that direction, but the MSDS says no such thing. The MSDS describes the product as being soluble in water. The EPA requires each product to describe whether it is soluble in water as that is a common means of fire suppression and spill clean up. The miscibility ( or lack thereof) is not an indication of whether a particular product is suitable for it’s intended use. Manufacturers of fuel treatment would not knowingly put anything harmful in their products. Some may work better than others for a specific purpose, but none are knowingly harmful when used as recommended.
The problem with E-10 is well known. The E attracts moisture until it reaches a saturated condition. The saturation point is temperature dependent. E-10 fuel will hold 0.4% water concentrations in solution at 70 degrees F. But the same mixture will phase separate at 30 degrees F. When phase separation occurs water plus ethanol sinks to the bottom of the tank, leaving low octane (82) fuel on top. Many of the bowl water separators won’t separate this water+ethanol mix. Filling stations with Cim-Tek “Hydrosorb“ filters will filter out this water+ethanol mix. Once this phase separation occurs the only way to reverse the process is to heat the fuel above the saturation temperature. None of us are heating gasoline so that’s not a practical fix. There is no chemical fix that will reverse the process.
I have 3 problems with the author’s conjecture.
1.) The presence of an “alcohol” ingredient does not make the product unsuitable for use in E-10 fuel. In fact the presence of an “alcohol” may be required in order to get the desired effect from the other ingredients in the fuel treatment. A number of the fuel treatment manufacturers have increased their “alcohol” content with the introduction of E-10.
2.) The author assumes that all “alcohols” are bad. Given the broad spectrum of “alcohols”, their chemistry and intended purposes I reject the blanket statement. That “alcohols” are bad.
3.) Assume that a product may have 50% “alcohol”. Further assume that the recommended mix ratio is 1:100. Thus the use of the treatment is increasing the “alcohol” content is 0.5%. Half of one percent. The EPA is already increasing the allowable ethanol (“alcohol”) content to over 11%. The use of small amounts of “alcohols” to carry the treatment ingredient is not harmful to the overall fuel system.
Water is the critical contaminate of E-10 fuels. De emulsifiers can’t work in E-10 because they cannot disassociate the water from the ethanol. The only answer is to use some form of “alcohol” to carry the additive ingredient into the fuel and alter the reactivity between ethanol and water. The question is what type of “alcohol” and what the effect is of the other treatment ingredients.
.

[ossipeeboater]

Ethanol is not requied in Northern NH but unfortuantely with the changeover in Portland to mixing ethanol most if not all the stations will have ethanol in it. There was always some stations in the exempt counties that pumped E fuel because ti was shipped from Revere. I would hope that there will still be some ability to get non ethanol fuel since it's usually mixed in at the depot not at the refinery but we'll have to see what May brings, I'm sure if stations can get non E you'll see them proudly displaying that fact.