Ethanol Free 93 at Murphy USA (Walmart)

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I hadn't been to the local Walmart in a long time. I stopped there for gas the other day, and there was a pump that said "Non Ethanol 93". It was only $2.49 compared to local places that sell 87 octane E0 for $2.99. I tried it in my chainsaw, and it's the real
thing. Has anyone else seen it at Murphy USA?
 
Originally Posted By: JustinH
Nope not at the ones in central Texas.
I can not find e0 anywhere.


Walmart on Franklin Ave & New Road in Waco, TX has 87 octane E-0 (it's $0.30 a gallon more than E-10)
 
Originally Posted By: skyactiv
Is the station near a popular boating destination?


There are two manmade lakes nearby, but those have E0 stations at their marinas. I don't think they carry 93 octane anyway.
 
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!!

If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)
 
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!!

If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)

Not necessarily. Depending on the local/regional demand for "premium" it's possible to divert enough of the higher octane "streams" to sell just 93 AKI fuel without ethanol. You can ask Nyogtha about how blending is done, and I'm pretty sure the answer is that it's a math exercise in blending all this stuff to meet various demands for different types of gasoline as well as meeting all regulatory requirements.

It might even be possible in California, but what the heck do they do with all the fuel that's left over? One of the uses for higher octane base fuel is to bring up the octane rating of lower octane fuel via blending. There's very little that can be done with fuel that can't be blended with ethanol or higher octane gasoline to make at least 87 AKI unleaded. I think it might be useful as Coleman-style camp fuel, but how much demand is there for that? Having left over, unsaleable fuel is a nightmare.

There's 92/93 AKI power equipment fuel that contains no ethanol. It costs a bunch though.

http://trufuel50.com/product-info/4-cycle/
 
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!!

If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)


I was blending ethanol free 93 (R+M)/2 gasoline in 1991. It was also MTBE and lead free. Otherwise known now as conventional gasoline.

Someone has quite a paradigm.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!!

If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)


I was blending ethanol free 93 (R+M)/2 gasoline in 1991. It was also MTBE and lead free. Otherwise known now as conventional gasoline.

Someone has quite a paradigm.

I'm pretty sure that these days there's more demand for premium unleaded with even econoboxes specifying 91 octane. Of course ethanol is probably the most effective octane booster available outside of lead.

I remember hearing about the "math exercise" in this article (or at least the original version which seems to have disappeared from the internet). It probably oversimplifies things, but it simplifies things enough to get why you can't just make as much 93 octane nonethanol unleaded as you want.

Quote:
http://www.smokinvette.com/corvetteforum....html#post20329

You see, when crude oil is refined into gasoline, the refinery doesn't have all that much control over what comes out. Crude oil is full of all kinds of stuff, and a refinery simply separates it, sorting all the iso-this and hepta-that in order of density. The really heavy stuff, like tar, is near the bottom, while the really light stuff, like butane, is near the top.

Somewhere in the upper ranges of the stack are the components of gasoline. There are between 10 and 15 different blend stocks, each with a different octane rating, which are mixed together to make gasoline.

The crude oil being used and little else determine the amount of each blend stock available for mixing. Generally, if you just dump all the blend stocks into a bucket, you end up with something around 88 or 89 octane. If you're selective and only mix the good stuff, you can make 92, 93 or even 95 octane. But once you take out the good stuff, you're left with [censored]--something like 85 octane. Then you have to leave enough good stuff in the bucket to bring this pee-water up to at least 87 octane. This limits the amount of 95-octane gas you can make. If you make 93-octane premium instead, you use up less of the high-octane stocks, allowing you to make a higher proportion of premium fuel.

In the Midwest, where an extensive customer base of good old boys in pickup trucks consume vast quantities of 87 octane, demand for premium fuel is low enough to make genuine high-octane premium.
 
Eh, kinda. The two refinery units that really provide high octane low vapor pressure gasoline blending components are the reformer (converts parrafins & naphthenes to aromatics) and alkylation (combines isobutane with propylene and butylene to make highly branched heptane & octane isomers).

The reformer is a very energy intensive unit with a volume loss as the liquid products are more dense than the feed. So there's a double economic penalty from the start. Running higher severity yields higher conversion (higher octane product) at several costs - more energy expended, less volume of product, and more rapid deactivation of the precious metal based catalyst (platinum typically with other metals) which both reduces unit cycle length between regenerations, and each regeneration cycle somewhat itreversibly damages the catalyst porosity lowering its effectiveness. More modern design continuous catalyst regenerayion reformers like UOP'S CCR Platformers and IFP Octanizers help but have limits in continuous coke burning capacity but the irreversible catalyst substrate damage still exists.

Alkylation uses high strength acid as catalyst, either hydrofluoric or sulfuric, which requires some exotic metallurgies and in the case of sulfuric acid technology, refrigeration which is the most expensive BTU in the refinery. Acid release detection and mitigation equipment is quite costly as well. There's minimum amount of octane adjustment here by maximizing the butylenes in the feed; some units at refineries designed to specifically export propylene as a petrochemical have extremely little capacity for alkylating propylene anyway.

Colder months allow a higher proportion of high octane higher vapor pressure components like isopentane and normal butane in gasoline bkending.

In Waco, it's likely the 93 octane E0 comes from the same refinery I worked at from 1990 - 2000. An aromatics extraction plant was comissioned a few years before I left but economics can favor using seperated toluene or mixed xylenes back into gasoline blending. Premium 93 octane E0 with no MTBE or other oxygenate was still being blended there when I left. But I was the first to so do at that facility back in 1991.

The biggest issue is balance. Sometimes I'd receive no less than 3 pipeline schedules the same day from Corporate Marketing, each with different size batches at different times on the schedule, and if I told them I was getting stretched on high octane components they always increased premium demand - frustrating. There's only so much tankage for surge and having to cut refinrry total feed rate due to marketing imbalance gets attention at high levels. At HQ a refinery is just a troublesome "black box" to the majority of employees - most never even visit a refinery in their careers, much less work at one.
 
They didn't have much. It was on only one pump out of fifteen. They'd just upgraded to new pumps and it was the only one that didn't say "all grades contain ethanol". It smells sweet like pure gasoline, not sour like E10 or E85. I dropped some and it evaporated instantly; much faster than 87 octane. I tried it in my Echo saw that recommends premium. It ran better than it ever has!
 
I checked the closest E0 distributor near me (7 miles) which happens to be a lawn service dealer. They want $30.00 per pre-packaged gallon cans, or $10/qt. I'm sure there are cheaper ways.
 
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!! If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)


Ethanol-free 93 is VERY common, but comes in 5 gallon cans and isn't cheap. According to pure-gas.org... some pumps have it , but all are over 100 miles from me

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha

In Waco, it's likely the 93 octane E-0 comes from the same refinery I worked at from 1990 - 2000.


It's actually only 87 - - but smells EXACTLY just like AvGas does!!!!
 
Originally Posted By: 69GTX
I checked the closest E0 distributor near me (7 miles) which happens to be a lawn service dealer. They want $30.00 per pre-packaged gallon cans, or $10/qt. I'm sure there are cheaper ways.

I've seen Home Depot, which sells 6 quart cans for $35.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/TruFuel-4-Cycle-Ethanol-Free-Fuel-6-Pack-6527238/203572162

I don't know how legal this would be to use in an on-road vehicle. Possibly not legal simply on the basis of not being a street legal pump fuel and on top of that no gas taxes.
 
Originally Posted By: y_p_w
Originally Posted By: 69GTX
I checked the closest E0 distributor near me (7 miles) which happens to be a lawn service dealer. They want $30.00 per pre-packaged gallon cans, or $10/qt. I'm sure there are cheaper ways.

I've seen Home Depot, which sells 6 quart cans for $35.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/TruFuel-4-Cycle-Ethanol-Free-Fuel-6-Pack-6527238/203572162

I don't know how legal this would be to use in an on-road vehicle. Possibly not legal simply on the basis of not being a street legal pump fuel and on top of that no gas taxes.


92 octane E0 is readily available here on the Olympic Peninsula at about a buck more a gallon than regular.

Now to the cost of TruFuel and others like them. It's not just pump gas sold for exorbitant prices. It is pure alkylate. It's synthetic gasoline, all oxidatively stable molecules and no impurities. It'll stay stable for many years. I'm working on a bottle that's at least 6 years old and still works as well a fresh bottle of Motomix.

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha
Alkylation uses high strength acid as catalyst, either hydrofluoric or sulfuric, which requires some exotic metallurgies and in the case of sulfuric acid technology, refrigeration which is the most expensive BTU in the refinery. Acid release detection and mitigation equipment is quite costly as well. There's minimum amount of octane adjustment here by maximizing the butylenes in the feed; some units at refineries designed to specifically export propylene as a petrochemical have extremely little capacity for alkylating propylene anyway.


Ed
 
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Originally Posted By: Vern_in_IL
Ethanol free 93??? I DON'T THINK SO!! If it was ethanol free, it should read 91 (add the corn to raise it to 93)


Ethanol-free 93 is VERY common, but comes in 5 gallon cans and isn't cheap. According to pure-gas.org... some pumps have it , but all are over 100 miles from me

Originally Posted By: Nyogtha

In Waco, it's likely the 93 octane E-0 comes from the same refinery I worked at from 1990 - 2000.


It's actually only 87 - - but smells EXACTLY just like AvGas does!!!!



Blended bunches of conventional 87 in my day as well. Probably primarily comes from the Valero Three Rivers refinery. In SA it appears to me Valero, Shell, Sam's Club, and Walmart / Murphy all pull from Valero's terminal / rack (now NuStar). Probably H-E-B as well but I rarely buy H-E-B gas. The Valero East CC refinery pushed a lot of product to San Antonio & points north as well back when it was Coastal, most likely still does. Exxon's exchange agreement in South Texas was historically with Southwestern, which is now Flint Hills.

We also produced 100LL Av Gas, primarily for NAS CC, and NASCAR racing fuel after the Alma, MI refinery shut down (we picked up that production contract, brand name was Torco IIRC).

WRT excess low octane gasoline boiling range material, a lot is sold to chemical plants and used as ethylene cracker feed in addition to NGL's. I even had excess low quality diesel material sold as ethlyene cracker feed in a bind once.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: Nyogtha

WRT excess low octane gasoline boiling range material, a lot is sold to chemical plants and used as ethylene cracker feed in addition to NGL's. I even had excess low quality diesel material sold as ethlyene cracker feed in a bind once.


What happens to the molecules that don't find homes in a new "chain"?

They get flared off?
 
Low molecular weight ones get used as part of the refinery fuel.

Before ULSD & LSG, a lot of hydrogen produced in the catalytic reformers, raising octane by converting parrafins & naphthenes to aromatics, simply was blended in the refinery fuel system.

Same was true of chemical plants that produced synthesis gas.

Now most refineries have supplemental hydrogen plants and / or hydrogen pipeline connections to satisfy increased hydrogen demand beyond what the catalytic reformers produce.

There's a minimum purge rate to flare systems to prevent air (oxygen) ingress creeping down the boundary layer at the pipe / tip walls, forming an explosive mixture within the flare system which can also have pyrophoric deposits.
 
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