H2o and gas

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BobbyY

Old Mopar guy
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Location
Austin Texas
Anybody tried washing their gas to get the alcohol out of it. This is something I have been doing for a while on model aircraft engines.
 
BobbyY said:
Anybody tried washing their gas to get the alcohol out of it. This is something I have been doing for a while on model aircraft engines.
Click to expand...

never head of this, tell us more!-------bob:coffee2:
 
According to Al Gore's www, you are supposed to be able to add water to gas, let it sit, and the alcohol adheres to the water and falls out to the top 'er bottom.

Geez, doesn't a "town" the size of Austin have any real gas?
 
I ran a load last night, it didn't fair so well in the dryer though.

Sorry couldn't resist. :D
 
My son-in-law does it all the time for his lawn equipment and chain saws. Where he lives the humidity is so high gas goes bad in just a few weeks. If he doesn't use gas with no alcohol he has to clean the white gel out of the carbs, fuel lines and tanks on a regular basis. He just puts the gas in a clear jug, adds some water, shakes up the mix well and lets it settle for a few days. Then he siphons the gas off the top and if he is careful he can get it accurately on the parting line. Then he pours the water/alcohol onto an un-used driveway and lights the alcohol and burns it off the top of the water. Has worked well for him for a couple of years.
 
I love to stimulate conversation and this sounded like a good topic to do so. This is not fiction just chemistry. Alcohol by nature is hydroscopic, meaning it readily absorbs into other liquids, gas as well as water. The Alcohol is more hydroscopic to water than to petroleum products. A cool experiment for you to try for yourself to see this is to take a clear soda bottle. Poor about 2 cups of water in the bottle, the amount is not critical. Use a permanent marker and mark the water level, then fill it about half full with gas, cap it and shake it for a minute or so. The idea here is to get as many water molecules in contact with as many gas molicules as you can. The next step is just waiting. The process doesn’t happen immediately, it takes a while. I normally let it sit over night. After the water has settled take a look at much higher the water level is, that is now the water plus the alcohol it has absorbed. For you purest if you measure how much water you used and how much gas you used you can see the percentage of alcohol that was removed. I normally get between 8 and 10%. The next trick is figuring out how you want to separate it, this can be accomplished in several ways. Regardless how I separate it the last step I use is to strain the gas through a Mr. Funnel (http://www.mrfunnel.com/Mr._Funnel/Home.html ) This is an add so only watch it if you want to. Mr Funnel is a water separator filter that work very well. :blob:
 
All very interesting. My snowblower, (2 cycle) was a pain in the butt to get going after sitting over the summer. Even though I used Stabil, it still needed a shot of ether to start until I got into some 'fresh' gas. Now two pumps on the primer bulb and it starts. Point is I looked online about this. and here is a link from Ehow. It gives good info some times, but the part about adding something else to pull the rest of the water out is interesting. I'm thinking about doing this so my lawn equipment will last longer. Thanks for the idea!

http://www.ehow.com/how_7830109_remove-ethanol-gasoline.html
Here is a link for no methanol gas in the U.S.
http://pure-gas.org/
 
67 Dart. The short answer to Austin and real Gas is no. We live in an area mandated by EPA to sell only gas with Alcohol. I fly large scale model aircraft and our engines are in the 100 cc class 2 cylinder 2 stroke varity and cost in excess of $1000.00 . Alcohol causes the bearings to rust and deteriorates the gaskets in the carburators. So when we were mandated to going to 10% Alcohol in our gas I started looking at doing something different. Being a ex-pilot I knew that av-gas did not contain alcohol, so I called a friend that keeps his aircraft located about 15 miles from where I live to ask him if he would pick me up some av-gas. When I told him what I needed it for he told me he had been washing the gas for his Cessna 172 for several years. His airplane is old enough that it likes 85-87 octane and not the 100 that is sold at most airports. He had his airplane certified for auto-gas by the FAA and has been doing this ever since.
 
BobbyY said:
I love to stimulate conversation and this sounded like a good topic to do so. This is not fiction just chemistry. Alcohol by nature is hydroscopic, meaning it readily absorbs into other liquids, gas as well as water. The Alcohol is more hydroscopic to water than to petroleum products. A cool experiment for you to try for yourself to see this is to take a clear soda bottle. Poor about 2 cups of water in the bottle, the amount is not critical. Use a permanent marker and mark the water level, then fill it about half full with gas, cap it and shake it for a minute or so. The idea here is to get as many water molecules in contact with as many gas molicules as you can. The next step is just waiting. The process doesn’t happen immediately, it takes a while. I normally let it sit over night. After the water has settled take a look at much higher the water level is, that is now the water plus the alcohol it has absorbed. For you purest if you measure how much water you used and how much gas you used you can see the percentage of alcohol that was removed. I normally get between 8 and 10%. The next trick is figuring out how you want to separate it, this can be accomplished in several ways. Regardless how I separate it the last step I use is to strain the gas through a Mr. Funnel (http://www.mrfunnel.com/Mr._Funnel/Home.html ) This is an add so only watch it if you want to. Mr Funnel is a water separator filter that work very well. :blob:
Click to expand...

I'm going to try it.
 
One work of caution I would add to anyone thinking about doing this. You will loose a couple of octane points in doing this because the alcohol does add a little to the over all octane. Not a problem for my model engines as the like 90 so I just buy 93 and wash it.

I started this thread to see if it was worth while for me to do it in larger scale for my Dart build. Not sure how an old school 360 will fair with alcohol in it's diet.
 
BobbyY said:
67 Dart. The short answer to Austin and real Gas is no. We live in an area mandated by EPA t
Click to expand...

Yeh.........after I posted I wondered if that might be the case. Too bad a place 'big's Texas and from "big oil" background befell the dreaded alcohol.
 
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