Simple question, does Top Tier no ethanol fuel exist?

[Wang.S]

Most marinas have ethanol free gas. Outboard motors were not designed to burn ethanol and will trash the engines if you use it. Some will sell it to fill up your car and others won’t. Guess it’s more of who’s palm you grease to obtain it.

If I remember right there is an app called gas buddy or something like it that will list all the places local to you that do sell it for that purpose.

Mercury says I can use up to 10% in my motor. It was new in 2008.
I wonder if I can make a claim to my government when the mandated 15% takes effect and my motor dies a sad ethanol death?

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[_TraMor]

Is that planting, fertilizing, weeding, harvesting by hand? A lot of time, energy and fuel is spent doing all those. Not exactly free fuel.

Of course not, it's not "free" if you start adding up operational costs.

For real I just kind of wondered how much corn you would need to make a gallon of ethanol then extrapolated that to if you had planted an entire acre. Then split that out into 1 week fill-ups of 17 gallons or so.

At that point I had made the executive decision that it made no financial sense and gave up.... kind of like what our government should have done.

 

[Racket]

I don't know why I felt the needs to do the math but if you grow 1 acre of corn you could roughly expect to get about 200 gallons of ethanol or roughly 12 weeks of "free" fuel.... assuming you already have all the stuff you'd need to make straight corn-juice-fuel.

One of my fantasies is to own a licensed (legal) whiskey distillery that makes a boutique product with local/regional grains and heritage corn and that sort of data is useful when I'd have to start approaching small farmers to contract for base ingredients.

 

[12Bravo20]

I don't know why I felt the needs to do the math but if you grow 1 acre of corn you could roughly expect to get about 200 gallons of ethanol or roughly 12 weeks of "free" fuel.... assuming you already have all the stuff you'd need to make straight corn-juice-fuel.

Unfortunately the feds frown highly on making your own ethanol fuel about as much as they do for making your own moonshine. Ya gotta pay the taxes to be legal.

And yes the only difference between the two is ethanol has a denaturing agent added to keep people from drinking it.

There is a big ethanol plant not too far from me and I always want to pull in when they are brewing the mash

 

[deleriumtremor]

To answer your original question, the Shell near my house sells 87 Octane Ethanol Free and is Top Tier.

Unfortunately, only my Walker mower will tolerate 87 Octane (it will also allow E10, but I don't use Ethanol fuel in anything that sits over the winter), all my other garden equipment generally specify 90 Octane min. So I have to drive all the way across town to get my Ethanol free 91 octane for my string trimmer, leaf blower, hedge shears. etc.

 

[Wang.S]

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/id/id-328.pdf

A record high for corn is 177 bushels per acre. So thats 477 gallons per acre.

15.1 billion bushels of corn a year in the US means 40.7 billion gallons of ethanol.

135.5 billion gallons of fuel used a year in the US.

 

[Ranger6g]

Down here in Oz it's the bottom tier and no-one uses it. Probably not that helpful tho' ?

 

[Friday yet?]

FYI, per our government "10% ethanol" in gasoline can be actually be anywhere between 8.1% and 11.9% ethanol.

And as to ethanol free..... boatload of tanks would test positive for a bit of ethanol. Not saying people aren't trying to do the right thing, but it's really hard to not get a bit of ethanol mixed in during the various steps of the supply chain.

 

[CB750F]

Starting this yr, 2023, all gas sold in Canada has a blend, 10% minimun?.
I think only Shell V-Power, 91, had no blend before.

 

[5thranger]

FYI, per our government "10% ethanol" in gasoline can be actually be anywhere between 8.1% and 11.9% ethanol.

And as to ethanol free..... boatload of tanks would test positive for a bit of ethanol. Not saying people aren't trying to do the right thing, but it's really hard to not get a bit of ethanol mixed in during the various steps of the supply chain.

Especially when a tanker delivers a full load of ethanol to pipeline, then simply pulls out of bay and goes to the next bay and loads for a station, there will be ethanol left in the tanker and gets mixed in with the next load whether it be diesel or gas.

 

[MrJ1s]

In Wisconsin our 91 premium, the highest we get, is 0%. Only thing I run in my small engined or motorcycle. Ethanol gas goes bad too fast and gums up the carbs. Everything else is 10%, 15% or E85. It's also why our premium os 90 cents more than 87.

Agreed, I am in Central Wisconsin using Kwik Trip 91/0% "Top Tier" in my power equipment and my 60s/70s High Performance Small Block Ford engine.

My Ranger gets Shell 93 because it seems to like it more than the 91/0%.

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