Meaning of 70% V/V on Denatured Alcohol for Gasoline Use?

Cowboy zagrabie wrote:

@>Ponichter Janusz, if you have an IPA for the price of denatured alcohol, I`ll have two Mausers please

You must not add alcohol that contains more than 5% water to gasoline - in practice, you should add 100% alcohol (realistic in the case of methanol or IPA), the price of denatured alcohol is not that attractive because 0.5 liter costs about PLN 6 - 7 and a liter of IPA practically you can buy anhydrous for about PLN 10.

If someone takes the trouble, they will find an existing Polish patent for the use of emulsion oil (used to produce cooling and lubricating emulsions in machining) as a fuel additive in order to bind water and enable its removal from the fuel system.

I will write again - adding denatured alcohol sold in stores may worsen the problem of water in the tank (ice plugs, etc.) - it is better to invest a few zlotys more and buy IPA, it is also worth adding alcohol when there is relatively little fuel left and leaving as soon as possible - all alcohol has a tendency to to absorb water and if a larger amount is present for a longer time, it may worsen problems with both tank corrosion and temperature-related problems.

It is worth remembering that alcohols in alkaline environments may cause corrosion of aluminum alloys.

robokop wrote:

Both true and not true. A mixture of alcohol and water of around 40% does not freeze - at least I haven`t seen frozen booze.

It`s not about the water-alcohol mixture freezing, but about the fact that water is separated from the water-alcohol-gasoline mixture - why is alcohol added to the tank - to bind the water and burn it, or maybe the water has collected at the bottom of the tank where it will be a great place for various fungi and bacteria that form on the edge of the film and where this will significantly increase the risk of internal corrosion of the tank (even though most fuel tanks have an anti-corrosion layer inside)?

robokop wrote:

The lower the alcohol concentration, the less it pulls moisture from the air. So half a liter of denatured alcohol in a bucket of water in the tank won`t do anything.

It`s not about absorbing moisture from the air, but about the ability of alcohol to absorb a certain amount of water and at the same time not separate if there is still gasoline - this is where single percentages begin to play a role.

robokop wrote:

Patent using emulsifying oil - you`ve gone too far here, what will be the crystallization temperature of such a mixture? In addition, oil diluted with gasoline will no longer have emulsifying properties.

My memory failed me, sorry - I refreshed it a bit - it wasn`t about emulsion oil, but about "water-washable grease for deep cold drawing"
patent PL161136

The use of this lubricant (or substances used to produce it) as an additive
for fuels is described in the patent PL 197330

robokop wrote:

Using inventions such as IPA and others is quite risky - it is impossible to predict their impact during the combustion process on important engine components, including the probability of decomposition of engine oil.

It is not, if you take the trouble to check the safety data sheets of the preparation - in the MSDS documents, many company preparations for removing water from the fuel system are based on IPA.
Moreover, we are not writing about engine oil, but gasoline - I consider adding denatured alcohol to diesel oil a pyramidal misunderstanding - that`s what the water filter is for, to catch water, and kerosene should be used as a depressant for diesel fuel, not alcohol.

Generally, the ideal would be to use butyl alcohol due to its properties practically comparable to those of gasoline. Isopropyl alcohol comes next to butyl alcohol - ethanol and methanol are worse than IPA.

Currently, I am not able to access the HDD where I should have a lot of different materials about alcohol as a fuel and the way it mixes with gasoline (in the presence of water) - AFAIR, one of such studies came from the USA, the other from Brazil (both government-owned and quite extensive with a lot of charts).

robokop wrote:

I`m afraid my friend got too caught up in theory. In sequence;
-how much bad and harmful water will there be in the tank? A few or a dozen or so grams, a larger amount has no reason to exist - the fuel pump pump usually pulls at the very bottom, this water would be sucked into the engine`s injection system and immobilize it. This is about a small amount of moisture, which may actually be present in the form of water at the bottom of the tank, and which, if frozen, could stick to the dragon strainer. Therefore, adding even 0.5 liters of ethanol to >40 liters of gasoline is unlikely to cause any harm. It is added not to burn the water, but to bind it and send it out with the fuel from the tank. Bacteria and fungi in the tank are also unlikely to exist - gasoline is an organic solvent that will rather utilize any proteins on an ongoing basis. I have never seen moss or algae in the tank, nor have I seen tank corrosion in modern cars - safety and economic requirements have long since introduced plastic tanks in passenger cars.

Well - I`m not going into theories because I have in mind the fact that anhydrous ethanol is currently added to almost every gasoline in an amount between 5 and 7% - adding denatured alcohol is not necessary unless someone feels the need, but then it is better to add a liter of isopropanol - the price difference is insignificant and the problems seem to be fewer. You can just as well fill up with some E10, or even better E85 (I don`t know if it is available in Poland) - anyway, with the price of half a liter of denatured alcohol between PLN 5 and PLN 7 (rather PLN 7 than PLN 5), it will still be cheaper.

http://www.intertek.com/microbiology/oil-and-gas-bacteria-testing/fuel-infestation/ - fuel loss is a fact - it is partly caused by the activity of various biological factors


Moreover, the problem concerns older cars, i.e. those equipped with metal tanks - on the other hand, in plastic tanks there are different reactions between plastics and alcohol, and it must be clearly specified in the vehicle documentation that it is possible to use alcohol (fuels containing alcohol) in them. The safest way is to add alcohol to a tank that is low on fuel and leave it as soon as possible - this way you avoid the problem of absorbing water from the surroundings.

robokop wrote:

But kerosene will not bind water, which, when frozen, together with crystallized paraffin, can effectively block the fuel filter.

Where does the water in ON come from? Yes, bioesters have a greater ability to absorb water, but at this point it seems more reasonable to use an acetone-kerosene blend than alcohol-water blend.

robokop wrote:

A colleague might as well write that pouring denatured alcohol into the dryers of truck brake systems is also heresy - there is also a problem with water, which in the form of ice can destroy the brakes.

Well, it`s hard for me to respond to this argument because I`ve seen advice many times to use nail polish remover to degrease the surface (most nail polish removers nowadays are acetone-free, and even when they were acetone-based, they still had additional lubricants whose task was to prevent degreasing).

And I will write once again - a liter of IPA with a purity of over 99% is about PLN 10-12 - half a liter of denatured alcohol with quite varied composition but with much less ethanol than 95.6% is about PLN 5-7 (of which, to be honest, I most often see closer to PLN 7 ).
A liter of IPA PLN 12 vs a liter of denatured alcohol PLN 14 - I don`t understand the point of paying more for a worse product.
Just evaporate a bit of denatured alcohol on a glass to see how much precipitate remains...

silvvester wrote:

This will increase the "octane" but there are 99 gasoline on the market so don`t worry.

No worries about what? Too high octane number of fuel in a gasoline engine? And what harm could it do?

tomo1885 wrote:

silvvester wrote:

This will increase the "octane" but there are 99 gasoline on the market so don`t worry.

No worries about what? Too high octane number of fuel in a gasoline engine? And what harm could it do?

A classic ignition system may have problems with igniting such a mixture.
Of course, the differences will not be significant and there should be no problems.

robokop wrote:

Well, this advice comes from the times when the socket was stiff 220V, ham was 100% meat and nail polish remover was pure acetone.
In fact, so far I have been removing the toner from the PCB using my wife`s remover - acetone and nail nourishing additives.

Nail polish remover has always been composed of water - even in the good times, it contained a maximum of 70% acetone.
And per ml, acetone is cheaper than nail polish remover.
A similar example of advice like de-rusting a cola when you can buy a bottle of salt.

robokop wrote:

But you won`t get IPA in your local grocery store - what`s more, I haven`t even seen it at gas stations.

Probably not, you have to buy it in an electronics/industrial chemicals store or on a popular auction site or in a chemical wholesaler - you can`t buy furniture in a grocery store or transistors at a gas station.

robokop wrote:

Do you think that nothing will remain after the gasoline evaporates?
Either way, how many votes, so many different opinions - to be decided by the interested parties themselves. Let me just say that I personally do not add anything to gasoline - for diesel engines, as a preventive measure, 2-3 liters of gasoline per 70-liter tank, at frosts exceeding 15 degrees - just for peace of mind. There is nothing more interesting than looking for a heated garage to defrost the fuel lines of a car that has been pulled off the road.

With the obligation to add alcohol to gasoline (up to 7% without informing about it in the fuel description, unless it has changed, it is already up to 10%), I do not see any point in adding alcohol to what is already in the fuel - what is more, what is already added is not it could have contained water compared to denatured alcohol, which currently contains quite a lot of water - if someone feels the need to remove water from the fuel system, they should do it in the summer rather than in the winter.

robokop wrote:

There is one more issue, often overlooked - refueling the car once a year with gasoline, when powered by LPG - what is in the tank after a year, the parameters in real life do not resemble those guaranteed by the quality standard - just compare the smell itself - it is also far from flammable ideal.

This is partly due to the alcohol contained in the finished fuel, which absorbs moisture from the air, and partly to a number of processes, including biological ones, which cause the fuel to lose its properties - therefore, long-term storage of fuels is not recommended unless certain conditions are met.