Testing for Ethanol in gasoline

[Gerald]

Does anyone have any experience with testing gasoline to see if it contains Ethanol?

I am thinking of getting some kind of test "kit" to check the gas where I buy for the boat and lawn mowers.

It looks like there are some kits that only cost about $ 20, but I wonder if they give reliable results. Some of the test are where you put a drop of test chemical in a small sample and if it turns blue (?) it has Ethanol in it.

[cmcnabb]

Just put an additive in it like StarTron. I always add it to my gas and I never have problems running E10 through my outboard.

[CajunChristian]

In reality, you will never find ethanol "free" gasoline. It may only be a trace, but, it will never again be totally free of ethanol. There is no special fleet of tanker trucks that haul ethanol free gasoline. They may haul a load of E10 this morning then haul a tanker load of "ethanol free" this afternoon. There will be residual left in the tanker from this morning. Well, guess what, that residual is mixed with the "ethanol free" and you then have ethanol tainted fuel.

StarTron, 1 ounce per 16 gallons of fuel. WalMart in the boating section.
D

[LPfishnTIM]

there is another thread on this! look it up there is ways to test without buying a kit. but the easiest way is with the chemical drops.

[DannyI]

Not sure if your right about that. I retired 42 years in CITGO refinery lab and in charge of instruments checking ethanol specs in our gas. When it leaves the plant it will be free of ethanol, and I believe the tankers are dedicated to ethanol or ethanol free gas. However, if they are able to cross fill the tanks in the trucks, if it previously had ethanol gas, and the tank was empty, and refilled with ethanol free gas, the amount of ethanol left would be so small it would hardly register on one of the test kits. The spec for ethanol gas is 10% ethanol added to the gas, can't be less, but can be a little more, but u loose profit by adding over spec.


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[1fastmerc]

Originally Posted by DannyI

Not sure if your right about that. I retired 42 years in CITGO refinery lab and in charge of instruments checking ethanol specs in our gas. When it leaves the plant it will be free of ethanol, and I believe the tankers are dedicated to ethanol or ethanol free gas. However, if they are able to cross fill the tanks in the trucks, if it previously had ethanol gas, and the tank was empty, and refilled with ethanol free gas, the amount of ethanol left would be so small it would hardly register on one of the test kits. The spec for ethanol gas is 10% ethanol added to the gas, can't be less, but can be a little more, but u loose profit by adding over spec.


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When I hauled fuel we used the same trailers for both. Like you said there is do little left in the tank that it doesn't make a difference.


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[Gerald]

Danny..... When I read the info on the test kit, it said that it would "change" color if there was ANY Ethanol in the sample. My concern is would the "test" show positive for very small amounts of Ethanol?

Note: I have considerable experience running titration test.

Example:

1/2 gallon of 10% Ethanol fuel left in a 10,000 gallon tank of gasoline.

That is 50 ppm of a 10 % mixture. So that would be 5 ppm of Ethanol in the sample.

Question...... would that be enough to make the color change and show a positive? Maybe 1 drop would make the color change on very small amounts of Ethanol and it would take several drops to make the color change in 10% Ethanol fuel.

I also, I don't think the "Test Kit" instructions said anything about sample size which would make some difference.

I would guess that 5 ppm amount of Ethanol would not hurt an outboard engine.