davecheng

<a href="http://toptiergas.com/retailers.html">http://toptiergas.com/retailers.html</a>
<a href="http://www.tc.umn.edu/~inman009/html/fuel.htm#toptier">http://www.tc.umn.edu/~inman009/html/fuel.htm#toptier</a>

davecheng

10% ethanol content is most certainly enough to notice a change in fuel economy.

DeMOROlized

At least here in Ontario.

Exact wording in the most current <a href="http://www.canlii.org/on/laws/regu/2005r.535/20060928/whole.html">Ontario Regulation 535/05, Amended 76/07</a> (emphasis mine):

3. (1) Subject to the other provisions of this Regulation, every fuel supplier shall ensure that gasoline that it places in the Ontario market in a compliance year contains, <B><font color="red">on average</font></B>, no less than 5 per cent ethanol by volume. O. Reg. 535/05, s. 3 (1).

Shell, for example, uses 10% ethanol in Bronze, 5% in Silver, &amp; <B>NO</B> ethanol in V-Power. Because of the higher sales volume of Bronze vs. V-Power, they'll still meet the 5% rule.

Another reason I use Shell exclusively.<ul><li><a href="http://www.canlii.org/eliisa/search.do?language=en&amp;searchTitle=Search+all+C anLII+Databases&amp;searchPage=eliisa%2FmainPageSe arch.vm&amp;text=ethanol&amp;id=&amp;startDate=&am p;endDate=&amp;legislation=legislation">Ethanol laws f

Tanner

A few here noticed much better fuel economy when switching from Sunoco 94 to Shell 91

Tgr_Clw

I'm one of those people. I still run Sunoco 94 tho.

nanotech

"Dirty" gas, fake octane numbers, now ethanol, Esso should be avoided like the plague as far as I'm concerned.

I run Ultra 94 still since my car is much happier on it (over aggressive GIAC tune) but I'd run Shell 91 or maybe Petro-Can 91 in a pinch. Never Esso. This is just another reason to avoid them.

S4sposeur

"They" cannot add oxygen but mother nature does when sugar is digested by yeast to make ethanol it leaves the oxygen from the sugar in the ethanol. Technically, it takes out CO2 and leaves "extra" hydrogen and oxygen.

Ethanol is not a hydrocarbon, but it can be considered to be an oxygentated hydrocarbon. Some older lambda fuel injection systems don't much like ethanol doped fuels because they didn't anticipate the addition of alcohols to hydrocarbon fuels so the O2 sensor may cause lean mixtures.

Alcool has less energy because it has fewer high energy carbon to hydrogen bonds to break when it burns and contains some oxygen which isn't a fuel obviously. If fuels were taxed according to energy content rather than simply volume or wholesale or retail price then gasoline would stack up as more efficient than diesel I suspect.

Ethanol and Methanol are roughly equivalent in energy content and both can be added to gasoline to make vehicle fuel. Fuel economy suffers if alcohol is added to gasoline motor fuel.

jason in toronto

this is good to know - i'm avoiding esso too

Hugh B

in that I drove my Frontier to MB and back to AB, 4000 km in total.As an experiment,I drove there using 91 octane and back using Regular gas.
(4.0L V6 normally aspirated. Nissan recommends 91 octane for better performance,but the sticker and manual say reg is OK)

Last half of the trip was driven faster than first half.
I got 10% better mileage on Reg gas. Go figure.
I used Shell and Mohawk/Husky whenever I could.
So I look at the numbers I got, and the stir some folks get going about gas and I wonder if it really matters.
Not at all scientific I know but....
Hugh

DeMOROlized

Heh that's more than elementary chemistry