anhydrous ethanol as a fuel

[dougyethanol]

I have been testing fuels with blending ethanol with premium pump fuel.
First tests were with azeotrope blends.
I found that anything leaner than 2/3 eth to 1/3 pulp would result in separation/cloudy juice. The 2/3 blend burned clean.
The leaner mixes would produce more smoke and you could see the water beading out of it, with flare ups in later stages.
And to be clear 100% pulp made lots of smoke!
Then i put some azeotrope through molecular sieves and made anhydrous ethanol.
There was a cloudy solution after 24 hours,which did settle,but was easily disturbed.
I ran The 100% solution through a mini still, amazing how different it performed to running azeotrope through it!
Final product, crystal clear anhydrous ethanol.
This stuff blended easily with any ratio of pulp you would like, and burned cleaner compared to azeotrope blends.
I run have run a 20% eth blend with minor jetting adjustment in my wr450f with amazing results!
Awesome fuel,and smells good too!

[shadylane]

I haven't tried anhydrous ethanol yet.
But my 70 year old tractor runs great on 90% ethanol and 10% water.
It just doesn't seem logical to mix ethanol and gasoline.

[kiwi Bruce]

Du Pont tried to convince the Government to go with methanol and not eth, but Brazil had some poisoning issues with the public using mentholated gas, so that never got off the ground.

[dougyethanol]

I haven't tried anhydrous ethanol yet.
But my 70 year old tractor runs great on 90% ethanol and 10% water.
It just doesn't seem logical to mix ethanol and gasoline.

I did read somewhere that 85% eth/15 gas (also known as gasahol) 95% was fine and more water at higher ratios was possible as you have found with your tractor. Only concern would be are you getting water in your oil? There are lots of companies blending eth with gas. Australia we have e10 available almost every station, and e85 at some stations.

[dougyethanol]

Du Pont tried to convince the Government to go with methanol and not eth, but Brazil had some poisoning issues with the public using mentholated gas, so that never got off the ground.

Australian government makes companies put poison in ethanol as they would prefer to kill their citizens for avoiding paying lucrutive alcohol tax!

[dougyethanol]

Cloudy after molecular sieves

Left over waste after final distillation

Final reading

Ethanol on bottom ,gasoline on top

Turn upside down then up to mix

Final product Gasohol!

[thecroweater]

Du Pont tried to convince the Government to go with methanol and not eth, but Brazil had some poisoning issues with the public using mentholated gas, so that never got off the ground.

Australian government makes companies put poison in ethanol as they would prefer to kill their citizens for avoiding paying lucrutive alcohol tax!

This is not actually true per say. Even mentholated spirits is not allowed to have methanol in it for that very reason, what they denature with is foul tasting and will make ya crook but acutely fatally poisoned.
Now biodiesel does have methanol in it so is pretty deadly. As for ethanol petroleum blend fuels like E10 and the like they have been common in Australia for several decades. They are cheaper than petroleum/gasoline but less efficient so it's touch and go weather you actually save to much per kilometre. I have wondered if someone could economically still their own fuel, one of the problems to overcome is the lack of lubrication needed even for most unleaded engines and more so for older engines say like in some old petrol tractor.

[hellbilly007]

The E-85 sold in the U.S. is a low octane (62, I think) natural gasoline. The properties of the ethanol blended with increases the octane rating to roughly 108. With that said, is there a particular reason you're using a higher octane gasoline to blend with?

[thecroweater]

Yeah I did notice the lower octane fuels while in the states, even the normal fuel is only 80 something and it was at this point I thought with added lubricant azeotropic alcohol should be no worries particularly if you can micro filter it. For petroleum based fuels here we have much higher octanes 91, 95, and 98 being the standards. I think even the E10 is not less than 91.
I think your biggest issue with anhydrous ethanol is how to store and keep it that way without it reverting back to its natural azeotropic state.

[dougyethanol]

91 octane is the lowest you'll find in Australian stations, e 10 usually is 94 octane, my 3litre v6 Mitsubishi runs much better on this as opposed to 91 ron(it knocks at low rpm). I make fuel for my dirt bike, it is not worth doing it for my car, bike has an 8 litre tank. My bike Yam wr450f runs average on 95, good on 98, and fantastic on e20, 100 octane. @hellbilly my latest mix was 95 + 20%eth(around 99 ocatne) which worked as good as blending with 98. Blending with 91 would give you around 96 octane. I did place a 30ml shot of my e20 on the bench with a cover over it, it isn't absorbing water but it is evaporating, i think the water absorption would only come into effect over long time storage, more so with a higher %of ethanol.

[rubelstrudel]

US octane rating is different than EU octane rating. It's not the same thing.

[thecroweater]

US octane rating is different than EU octane rating. It's not the same thing.

You are quite right, I had forgotten that the US and Canada use and all together unrated rating or two in fact just to make it really confusing.
So I just googled the "RoN" octane rating of ethanol to see it is much higher (108) than petroleum so this might be one of the reasons why you always seem to see it fold as a blend rather than straight ethanol. I could imagine that putting a fair strain on modern engines with tighter tolerances

[dougyethanol]

The main reason i blended ethanol into my motorbike fuel is temperature! It has high compression(standard) and it would mostly blurt coolant out the overflow, just as my 351 Cleveland would on shut down. I live in a tropical area so heat is an issue, it gets hot! it hasn't blurted on ethanol, the spark plug shows cooler combustion temperatures and the temperature change on top of bike is noticeable. The cooler temps were what i was after, the power gains were a bonus!

[contrahead]

Choosing this thread to drop this link in. Mainly it's about E10 gas having a short shelf life and why.

http://fuel-testers.com/expiration_of_ethanol_gas.html

My main complaint with gasohol mixtures, is what it does to older engines that I've made the mistake of using it in. Turns an old 84 Chevy pickup or a 73 MG into stink bombs – as it eats away at rubberized gaskets, O-rings and fuel lines. Fowled up my chain saw big time too. So now I go out of my way to purchase a (racing) gasoline blend without ethanol – for the saw at least.

Adding this image below for the heck of it.