Real Gasoline, not Ethanol

The VP Racing 94 seems to be fantastic E0 for your small engines. Apparently it costs around $70 bucks for a 5-gal pail.
Here's HomeDepot ad, $50 bucks a 8-small cans. Seems like this is not gaso for your PiP, Bisco.

Now I bet you'd get high MPG with this stuff. Sort of interesting: we complain about the cost of gasoline but look at the cost of some good stuff. I think it's possible some Prius owners in certain regions have access to this kind of primo E0 fuel at relatively low cost at regular stations. Not me: it's essentially banned by EPA in my (and your) region.

VP Small Engine Fuel 4-Cycle 94 Octane Ethanol Free (8-Pack)-6208 at The Home Depot

 

Ethanol is much cleaner, healthier, better for the environment and it's carbon-neutral. All the CO2 that comes out the pipe goes back into the ecosystem.

 

but i thought ethanol was just a filler, which does nothing but reduce mpg's and drive up food prices?

 

Updating the above post from May 2012. Presently, pure-gas.org lists ~8935 stations selling 100% gasoline(E0). With an increase of ~12% more, listings should be 10,000 by the beginning of 2016. With the collapse in 10% ethanol blend prices, low turnover fuels (like E0 & E85) can't refill their wholesale & retail tanks with crashing priced new E0 & E85, as fast as high turnover 10% ethanol blend chains(Costco, Arco, etc). Therefore, the price gaps have leaped to 25% to 40% (many places, even higher). At such price gaps, I don't see how E0 station increases can continue. Possibly, when the crashing gas prices level out, then low turnover E0 price gaps compared to 10% ethanol blends, will decrease & E0 will increase its desirability.
Presently, our 3 cars, with years of accurate comparative data, have mpg increases, E0 vs. 10% ethanol blends, of 8%, 7%, & 5%.

 

Well I do not know Litesong...don't be too discouraged yet...gasoline is approaching $1 wholesale in some areas. Not sure what ethanol prices are, but seems ethanol cannot go that low in price. So therefore it is possibly cheaper to sell E0. You are saying the E0 dealers cannot empty their tanks without taking a loss. At some point don't they have to take that loss and then buy in at the lower price?

The big thing in my mind is how Congress/EPA sorts out the ethanol mandates. We can hope they will allow some E0 on the market. However, EPA has indicated they probably want go to the max on ethanol. But that was before the gaso price crash, so all bets are off. Not sure the dynamics now.

 

Yes, the E0 dealers take the loss, & buy in at a lower price. However, wholesale low turnover E0 is already higher priced than high turnover wholesale 10% ethanol blends, & by the time the low turnover E0 is in retail tanks for two weeks, it is again selling for way higher than they could ever hope to sell, near high turnover (Costco, Arco, etc) 10% ethanol blends. Just go to a Costco & see almost vast numbers of pumps continually in use from 6am to 8pm. The only hope is if Costco starts selling E0..... & that may be the one pump that won't be continually used during the day. As it is, traditionally high-priced fueled Washington state, has 10% ethanol blends selling for $1.62 in Spokane, eastern Washington & $1.78 in Sequim, western Washington.
Anyhow, Senator Feinstein/Coburn have attached their bill to halt ethanol blending into 100% gasoline, onto the Keystone XL pipeline support legislation. "Spin the dial" politics may see the ethanol mandate finally repealed.

 

Well...I've been stuck on 12v, hv, audio, and maintenance for a while, and then I stumble upon EO. Now I've got another item to add to my list, which is getting more and more interesting. Thanks for keeping the conversation going. I found places where E0 is available and am schedule a fillup about a week from now. Though both stations are about 12 miles away, it'll be interesting to see if I can consistently fill up and have usable data in short order. Especially interesting would be if my mileage increased.

 

Also, a lot of water and fertilizer and pestitides which in the U.S. runs off into the Mississippi River. All this ends up in the Gulf of Mexico creating a dead zone approx. the size of the state of Rhode Island and growing.

DBCassidy

 

What I do when I am trying to test fuels, I get exactly 1.50 gallons in my red plastic lawn mower gaso container. Then I measure how many grams of fuel I got (first of course I get a empty weight on the can). Then I can get the density of the fuel. Ethanol gives you about 3% less energy. So E0 is an instant 3% MPG increase in theory. But also the density of the fuel can vary, such that you might see a double benefit, or alternately you could see no improvement. Where I live we have reformulated gasoline which is rock bottom lowest density as low as 0.72 gram/cc and we have E10. So I have about the lowest possible energy content (and I estimate >50% of Prius owners are in my situation). Your E0 could be up to 10% better MPG than my gaso due to both factors. But I am not sure your specific E0 is 3% better than your specific E10 without some data.

 

I did check on the E0 stations, and there are none within reasonable distance to NOVA. kinda sucks, but then the dragon lady actually pays for my gas from Costco, so it doesn't really matter to me.

 

Yeah does suck we don't have E0 anywhere handy. within 60-100 miles. Also being in RFG zone, our Premium does not have any extra energy content. If we lived in Staunton, VA we would have lots of fuel choices. I can't wait to get over that way someday with my gaso can to meaure some differences. The best I can do regularly is heading west to Pittsburgh on I-70 somewhere around Hagerstown is where the RFG zone ends. So I try to fill up after Hagerstown around I68 junction and anywhere after that.

 

what's rfg stand for? really f___edup gasoline?

 

RFG is the cleaner burning Reformulated Gasoline that many major metropolitan areas have to use, including you and me.
Basically its a lower aromatics E10 blend. So lower energy content.
Originally ethanol was only used for RFG but later Congress decided to mandate ethanol for all regions.
But in RFG regions, E0 is essentially banned, so that's why we cannot get it.

 

hmm. sounds like I was right then... if only I could have convinced the dragon lady to move west.

 

RFG is reformulated gasoline. More volatile organic compounds (i.e. benzene) are removed from the gasoline during the refining process. So it burns cleaner but also requires more energy to refine (higher cost). It is federally mandated in non-attainment areas for US EPA Ozone limits.

Ethanol prices are mostly irrelevant in a lot of cases. Some states have an ethanol mandate. Then the fed gov't has a RIN requirement which refiners must meet. Then most refiners produce an RBOB (reformulated blended oxygenate blend) gas which is 83 octane. Ethanol is 116 octane so refiners will need to blend in 10% ethanol to raise the octane to 87.

 

Why do you say ethanol price is irrelevant? It's mandated so we have to pay it?
This thread concerns price of E0 so if ethanol is expensive that should bode well for E0 cost and vice versa.

 

Ethanol needs high compression ratio (16:1) ethanol engines to extract almost all its energy, efficiently. Ethanol, as used( not burned efficiently) in low compression ratio (9:1 to 11:1) gasoline engines, cannot extract its energy, efficiently. In other words, ethanol engine engineers are good & know how to get the energy out of 100% ethanol. Also, gasoline engine engineers are good & know how to get the energy out of 100% gasoline. Combinations of both fuels cannot work efficiently in either engine.

 

I don't know if you're right about that because EPA does not measure and report MPG on ethanol blends.
They use E0.
In the lack of gov't proof otherwise, therefore, I must assume you could be correct!!

 

• A long time user of 100% gasoline (E0), the developed wide price gap between E0 & 10% ethanol blends(E10) during the oil price collapse, caused me to switch to E10. However, with the recent E10 price bounce upward, I called Olympia, Raymond & Chimacum, WA E0 stations, finding good prices of $2.45 per gallon. If my local Everett E0 station will come down similarly, I'll be pumping E0, pretty soon again.

 

I am on my second tank of E0. Mileage before resetting to 0 came to 54 mpg during my typical schedule, combined hwy / city. Not too shabby.