Posts: 3475
Location: Elk River, Minnesota | Hiya,
Well...a few things to think about as well, as the tests are done on carbed small engines as compared to our marine engines of today designed to run on E10, which means they will have tested all components, metallurgy, etc. on the engines being produced today.
What is not talked about are all of the other additives in the fuels themselves which make up the fuel overall (Things like benzene and toluene etc.) They will be of different concentrations for each blend of fuel. Now...if this guy in the video took pure ethyl alcohol and put the aluminum, and the components into it and let it sit, there would be a whole different story to tell.
One must also consider when storing an engine, it is always recommended to fill the entire tank with fuel to limit any sort of condensation from happening. Also, he misquoted. Alcohol does not Attract water or pull it from the air... It bonds with when introduced, and in the amount of fuel he had, the introduction of water was excessive and not representative of what really would happen for hydrogen bonding, when more complex solutions are created, the solubility goes down, but not completely, so the massive introduction of water to his glass jar is not proportionate to what would happen in a tank without extra introduction of water.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=43&v=4x_t0MLxie4
As for corrosion on components that he showed toward the end, the E10 and non ethanol blends are almost identical with our without stabilization, and that is after 9 months.... It was obvious that non treated fuel did not do well, but again, how much did he have in the jars beforehand? were the jars filled to the brim, then capped and vented? We don't know that, so there easily could be some skew in the results. I'd doubt the fuel would be completely evaporated to the gel component if it were full. I'd doubt we'd see the same looking fuel if the jars were completely filled for his first part.
The marine engines of today have been engineered to run on E10 fuel....they are tested beyond any sort of bench testing this guy has done on his small engines, and the components used to build a small engine are vastly different than those used in automotive engines and marine engines of today. Older carbed engines of the 70's and 80's are a different story, though....
This is not an apples to apples comparison... It's not even close to being a perfect experiment and without an introduction to this experiment, and his set-up, we have no clue how he started this process to see whether it was flawed from the beginning or not.
Questions that immediately came to mind for me...What would be the result of adding just a little water to a full jar, keeping it under the point where phase separation would occur? What would those results be? How would suspending the components in the non-ethanol fuel with water introduced be different than leaving it on the bottom in the water almost completely(given it is not acidic)? Aluminum is stable in non acidic water...
Way too many variables in this video to even come close to determining E10 vs non ethanol being a good or bad thing.
To me, the tell tale sign was his end showing all the component pieces side by side. The parts put in the E10 and non ethanol blended fuels looked almost identical, and I would attribute any of the minute difference in those two with the other additives blended with the individual fuels when they are created...they are not the same, and will most likely not be in the same concentrations for each type of fuel.
Use the fuel of your choice...it still comes down to one basic thing: Maintenance of your fuel system.
Fill your tank with your fuel of choice, stabilize that fuel, get that stabilized fuel running through your engine, and it'll be ready for next spring...some 4 -5 months from now. With full tanks, no water will EVER be an issue in either fuel, and no deterioration of components will EVER be an issue as the components are designed for use of either E10 or non-ethanol fuel.
Steve
Edited by VMS 10/22/2019 9:54 AM
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