Quote:
Edit: The answers have been posted here: http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/ethanol-fuels-and-phase-separation/
All,
Gumout Performance Additives would like to thank you for the great interaction you had with us in our last Q&A sessions. Hopefully, we were able to provide valuable insights into our products and educate on fuel & oil additives in general.
In this next session, the focus will be on ethanol fuels and phase separation. There are a lot of assumptions when it comes to what exactly phase separation is and what it can do to a vehicle’s engine and fuel system especially in a humid or marine environment and when a vehicle is stored for an extended period of time.
So what is phase separation? In a nut shell, it’s when ethanol in gasoline attracts water either from the external environment, condensation inside the fuel tank or from within the fuel itself. They are attracted to each other due to their polarizing characteristics on a chemical level. Since ethanol is denser than fuel, it settles to the bottom of the tank; ethanol can then start to dislodge any varnish or other deposits where they mix in with the gasoline. These deposits then make their way through the fuel system which can cause issues such as premature fuel pump failure, hesitation, loss of acceleration and fuel economy. The water that was attracted to the ethanol at the bottom of the tank then goes to work on the metal surfaces causing rust and corrosion. In some extreme instances bacteria can grow which can cause gasoline quality problems
There are several other issues that ethanol and water can cause beyond what happens in the tank, such as rust and corrosion within the fuel system, clogged injectors and fuel filters, damage to plastic and rubber parts.
However, all of these issues can easily be addressed by using the right products and processes. If you are regularly running gasoline through your system and don’t operate the engine in a humid climate, aren’t storing the vehicle for an extended time or aren’t using the engine in a marine environment, you may not have any ethanol related issues to worry about; however, we’d like to open the topic up for discussion and share with you what we know so you can make an educated decision on how to manage this potential problem.
Beginning today, the thread will be open for question submissions until 9 p.m. ET on Sunday November 8th, at which time we will send them back to our full team of scientists, engineers and brand representatives to provide answers to as many of the questions as we can a few weeks later.
We are extremely excited to provide you with this service, but do have a few requests:
1. Please use this forum ONLY to submit questions. If you have previously posted questions on other areas of the site we will do our best to find them and provide answers, but your best bet is to repost the question in this thread.
2. Please understand that there will be some questions that we will not be able to answer. Some of our formulation information is proprietary, such as how much of a certain additive we put in our products, and can only provide feedback on our areas of expertise.
3. Please understand that we will not speculate on the products of our competitors, but we may be able provide you with ways to determine what they may have in their formulations. Not all products are created equal, so question claims and benefits and demand more information on what is in the product, what tests were used to determine efficacy and what were those results.
We look forward to your questions and thanks for your involvement!
The Gumout Team
Edit: The answers have been posted here: http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/ethanol-fuels-and-phase-separation/
All,
Gumout Performance Additives would like to thank you for the great interaction you had with us in our last Q&A sessions. Hopefully, we were able to provide valuable insights into our products and educate on fuel & oil additives in general.
In this next session, the focus will be on ethanol fuels and phase separation. There are a lot of assumptions when it comes to what exactly phase separation is and what it can do to a vehicle’s engine and fuel system especially in a humid or marine environment and when a vehicle is stored for an extended period of time.
So what is phase separation? In a nut shell, it’s when ethanol in gasoline attracts water either from the external environment, condensation inside the fuel tank or from within the fuel itself. They are attracted to each other due to their polarizing characteristics on a chemical level. Since ethanol is denser than fuel, it settles to the bottom of the tank; ethanol can then start to dislodge any varnish or other deposits where they mix in with the gasoline. These deposits then make their way through the fuel system which can cause issues such as premature fuel pump failure, hesitation, loss of acceleration and fuel economy. The water that was attracted to the ethanol at the bottom of the tank then goes to work on the metal surfaces causing rust and corrosion. In some extreme instances bacteria can grow which can cause gasoline quality problems
There are several other issues that ethanol and water can cause beyond what happens in the tank, such as rust and corrosion within the fuel system, clogged injectors and fuel filters, damage to plastic and rubber parts.
However, all of these issues can easily be addressed by using the right products and processes. If you are regularly running gasoline through your system and don’t operate the engine in a humid climate, aren’t storing the vehicle for an extended time or aren’t using the engine in a marine environment, you may not have any ethanol related issues to worry about; however, we’d like to open the topic up for discussion and share with you what we know so you can make an educated decision on how to manage this potential problem.
Beginning today, the thread will be open for question submissions until 9 p.m. ET on Sunday November 8th, at which time we will send them back to our full team of scientists, engineers and brand representatives to provide answers to as many of the questions as we can a few weeks later.
We are extremely excited to provide you with this service, but do have a few requests:
1. Please use this forum ONLY to submit questions. If you have previously posted questions on other areas of the site we will do our best to find them and provide answers, but your best bet is to repost the question in this thread.
2. Please understand that there will be some questions that we will not be able to answer. Some of our formulation information is proprietary, such as how much of a certain additive we put in our products, and can only provide feedback on our areas of expertise.
3. Please understand that we will not speculate on the products of our competitors, but we may be able provide you with ways to determine what they may have in their formulations. Not all products are created equal, so question claims and benefits and demand more information on what is in the product, what tests were used to determine efficacy and what were those results.
We look forward to your questions and thanks for your involvement!
The Gumout Team