Damage from ethanol

I've had some trouble with memory loss, and headaches in the morning.

As for cars and ethanol, there is no problem if you stay with 10% or less. The seals, plumbing, and tanks are designed for it, unlike with boats.

Tom

 

106,200 miles using ethanol.

No problems so far... except a mild hangover.

.

 

Once, sophomore year in college. First & last time I ingested vodka. E10 has been around an awful long time and the systems are deigned for it. E85 is a different story.

 

Stop imbibing an hour before you go to bed and switch to water. Then, drink water whenever you awaken during the night/morning for a bathroom trip and you will be fine...unless you really overdid it.

As for the Prius, I've been stuck with 10% ethanol and am still exceeding EPA figures. I'm curious about how it will do on real gasoline.

 

Curious whether anyone has taken on the dodgy task of converting a Prius into an ethanol capable flexfuel vehicle. (Voiding warranty, changing all seals, the software issues, etc). Retrofitting is a major undertaking beset with risks. Nevertheless, if the cars came from the factory as flexfuel ready, the costs to the manufacturer are almost negligible, less than $100 in a non-hybrid.

I'm aware of the energy-return-on-energy-invested ratio with corn-based ethanol.

 

babaram, to be explicit: Prius was designed for up to 10% ethanol ("E10"), so that's fine. But don't put E85 in a Prius.

 

Here was my experience with ethanol. I just took a 2500 mile trip in my brand new Prius. 3/4 through the trip I fueled up at a station that was at $1.99/gal. I noticed the tag "contains 10% ethanol". I am not sure if it was just bad gas or if it was the ethanol, but my overall (trip wide) gas mileage was brought down from 52.4 mpg to 50.1 mpg. More than two full points in about half a tank. Half tank and all of the driving from the fill up to when I noticed it was on Interstate. I figured it all up and that single tank of gas (I had to fill up WAAAAAY early) got less than 30 mpg overall. The ethanol just burned up and completely negated any advantage I may have had in the Prius. I will NEVER buy gasoline with ethanol again if I have any choice. The brand was Shell. I've used Shell before with the Prius and had no problems. I think it was simply the ethanol additive. Just another way to make us buy more gasoline.

 

Gasoline with 10% ethanol is the default fuel for any of us Prius owners who live in metropolitan areas.

Most U.S. cities have laws on the books that requires all gasoline sold in their jurisdictions to contain at least 10% ethanol in order to cut down smog emissions, so E10 is pretty much the only fuel available to those of us who live in those areas.

 

Since all my Prius has ever used is E10 and my lowest MPG ever was 36 (from carrying 2 kayaks on top at highway speeds), that's basically impossible to believe... especially with a 48.0 MPG lifetime average at 107,888 miles.

Obviously, there was another influence at play. How do you know the early refill was accurate? Where "full" is can be a challenge to find, especially if using a pump with a different sensor type when traveling.

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I've had no problems here getting 48 mpg or better on E-10, though coming back from vacation over a week and half ago, I realized after filling back up the vehicle, the tire pressure must've been back to 35 (I only got 48.3 for some reason) so I pumped them back up to 46/44, and I'm back to 53 mpg on the next tank. I haven't gotten anything lower than 41.1 (last tank, due to a trip from Jacksonville to Melbourne and back in one day... highway speeds at 80 mph just don't help my mpg.)

 

Everyone seems to concentrate on MPG when knocking ethanol. With the difference between regular and ethanol being upwards of .10 + cents per gallon, I concentrate on the "cost per mile" to drive the car. If the difference in price of the two gasolines is less than .10 cents I use regular if more I use ethanol. Sure it's nice to see more MPG but I can accept less if it's costing me less too. Wouldn't this be the correct way to optimize the use of these fuels?

 

how does one know if a station has E-10. 90% of the time it's never on the pump bay, nothing..nada..

although at two stations I have seen it posted. And at others I have asked inside mostly to clueless looks. Apparently most stations use it now, it's just not posted.

is there a website to track this sort of information? I would like to fill with traditional gasoline to see if MPG improves. From my understanding all the gas in las vegas has E10 in it now.

 

I came to my conclusion simply through deduction. My vehicle took approximately 10 gallons of the ethanol fuel. In less than 200 miles my gas gauge was at half a tank. I drove as far as I dared to go, two pips, before I filled up again, this time at with regular gas. I was able to put in about 10 gallons again. Total miles from one fill-up to the next was 342 miles. Since that ONE tank of gas my mileage has been coming back up to a more normal 46mpg (where it is right now). Each tank of gas has been substantially better as the bad gas gets diffused and used. Either it was just a very bad tank of gas, or it was the ethanol. I am not the only person who has issues with ethanol by any stretch as a friend of mine has told me the same thing with her car (not a Prius). Her mileage is cut nearly in half too when she uses ethanol laced fuel.

 

That is an excellent way of determining if it is worth getting. If the price per mile is less with the ethanol fuel, I would go for it. Where I am though, there is little difference between the E-10 and regular fuel prices. Maybe a few cents in either direction. For me, the ethanol would double my gas costs. If my deduction about the E-10 is correct that is.

 

SC, it was not the ethanol. It is impossible to reliably calculate MPGs in a Prius using a single tank-fill, because the tank capacity is variable (the amount you put in at any one fill is almost never equal to the amount you *burned* since the previous fill). There are probably a hundred thousand words on this site on that subject. The MPGs reported by the car, 50 versus 52, are entirely consistent with the expected drop in MPGs expected from the laws of physics. So stop hyperventilating and relax.

Besides, every large city in the US now uses ethanol in gas to reduce CO emissions. Whattya gonna do, drive twenty miles out of your way to buy fuel? That would be silly.

 

We are fortunate in our area not to be forced to buy ethanol. One station that I know of carries it, and I don't go there after noting it had added ethanol. But in travels through seven states over the last four months, every time I've seen ethanol posted, the sticker said "Contains 10 percent or less ethanol". It would appear the requirement is that there is less than 10 percent in those areas.

In one state (Colorado) where I was forced to buy a tank or two of ethanol gasoline, the mileage did not show significant difference (maybe 1-2 mpg).

I also have not seen any indication in those seven states that the cost of ethanol gasoline is much different than that of non-ethanol gasoline. The one station here (Murphy Oil) generally carries a cheaper price, but not significantly different from other stations.

 

Geez... ethanol in gasoline is the fluoridation of our age, inn't.

 

How about bad gas AND a bad pump sensor? Of course, it could be that all your other gas was bad and the ethanol cleansed the system which could really cause havok with for efficiency.

Since here in the land of E10 (for over a decade) we don't see MPG that drastically lower, there must be some other contributing factor at play.

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