What effect will the use of 10% or greater ethonol in my gas have on my 2007 Toyota Rav4 as to GPA and/or engine or other parts maintenance problems?
not much really noticeable with the 10%. but if you use E85 in a NON ‘flex fuel’ engine it can ruin the components.
the mileage may suffer a little bit, but most likely not noticeable.
is you engine a ‘flex fuel’ model?
The 10% ethanol blens is a response to the MBPE problems in old gas stations. MBPE is a chemical that boosts octane in gasoline. Older gas tanks in the ground can develop leaks, and MBPE was found in ground water. MBPE doesn’t break down; consider it a poison in the ewater supply. Your government’s response was to replace MBPE with ethanol, which also increases octane but does no damage to your car at a 10% ratio. I’ve noticed about a 10% decrease in gas mileage and don’t expect much more.
All cars sold in the U.S. in recent years have been designed to run on ethanol concentrations up to 10%. Fuel economy will be down a few percent with E10 compared to 100% gasoline.
Drinking too much ethanol will have a significant negative effect on your GPA. Hit the library, not the bar!
That’s MTBE I believe. methyl tertiary butyl ether.
As if the rest of the chemicals in gasoline can’t contaminate ground water.
I live in phoenix AZ, we are required to use 10%ethanol blend in summer to reduce smog. No noticeable effect. You may be running on 10% now and not even know it.
I think MTBE replaced leaded gas, back when. Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether is not good stuff, but neither is lead, arsenic, cadmium, mercury or anything else the government allows corporations to rain down on us and put it in fertilizer that grows our food (certain amounts are ALLOWED), why now our gas tanks?
Sorry for the off-topic post, but MTBE, while not as toxic/carcinogenic as other gasoline components, is much nastier when it gets loose in the environment. It tastes awful if it gets into water, and it is almost impossible to remove from water. The naturally-occuring microbes in soil that will eat gasoline will not touch MTBE, so once it gets into soil, it just stays there until it eventually washes down to the water table, whereas non-MTBE gasoline often gets biodegraded before it gets down to the water table.
“Drinking too much ethanol will have a significant negative effect on your GPA. Hit the library, not the bar!”
NYBo–You beat me to it!
;-))
[b] Drinking too much ethanol will have a significant negative effect on your GPA. Hit the library, not the bar! [/b]
Every university I know of has a bar called the library. 
Except for the one I graduated from.
The reason that there are allowed levels is because it is possible to measure contaminations in parts per million and if there was zero allowance of these substances, you couldn’t legally irrigate with natural river water.
It’s not like corperations are putting all that stuff in fertilizer on purpose.
MTBE as a fuel additive.
the mtbe was used as an octane booster. it worked splendidly to boost the octane. however, (actually most of) the mtbe was simply spat out the exhaust in unburned form.
it was discovered that most of the mtbe simply ‘poured’ out the exhaust, and then ran off the road into the ditches and drain culverts. it causes birth defects, and gave the little critters some growth problems. so the coorelation was made, if it causes birth defects in animals, then it must be hurting US.
so it was banned from use as a gas additive. actually, since ethanol does the job effectively, and with no added nasty side effect on gas, why not use ethanol? i just disagree with the use of ethanol as a ‘one size fits all’ cure for the petroleum dilemma.
i sure would like to EAT, and not worry about food prices so much. thanks ADM!
Not quite. MTBE is soluable in water, unlike the rest of gasoline, so every leaking underground gas tank had the potential to contaminate the underground water supplies. Nothing to do with unburnt MTBE.
“In comparison to alcohols, MTBE is only slightly soluble in water, but is fully miscible with all gasoline- type hydrocarbons.” copied from http://www.acfa.org.sg/pdf/MTBE%20&%20Engine%20Performance.pdf
so the fact is MTBE is completely soluble in petroleum, but not really effectively soluble in water.
no mtbe is NOT soluble in water, that is the problem. since MTBE ran out of the convertor, without being burnt, or chemically changed, and then runs off the roadway into the ditches/drains it stays on top, and remains on the ground right where it drops out of the tail pipe. there is a great deal of conflicting testimony from the EPA, and the big oil, which all state MTBE was fine to use. but then about 10 years ago some scholars found out the truth, and MTBE’s birth defect issues.
ethanol IS completely and rapidly soluble in water, thus the inherently safer use of it is afforded to the environment.
the difference is… gasoline with or without octane booster is bad for the environment. how it gets there is irrelevant.
gas with MTBE was WORSE for the environment than gas with ethanol. ergo the desire to use ethanol as an octane booster.
MTBE can only be a problem because it is ‘slightly soluable’ in water. Were it insoluable, it could not get into the ground watersupply, and thereby into drinking water, causing all the problems. Take a look at this: http://rydberg.biology.colostate.edu/Phytoremediation/2001/Zac_web/whyMTBE.htm. What reference do you have regarding the “MTBE ran out of the convertor” theory?
http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/pubs/600ja03117/600ja03117.pdf
although this is 5 yrs old, in principle it is the same.
the key sentence to back up the “tail pipe theory” is on page two. second sentence.
and i personally don’t believe everything i read, but the debate over the solubility of MTBE seems to be the whole debate over its use (or discontinuance) its rapid deployment into the environment, and the difficulty in removal.
if MTBE was really soluble in water, then why does it not get so dilute that it becomes minuscule?
if anything gets watered down (even nuclear radiation) it reaches a point of being inert.
why does MTBE NOT get ‘weaker’ or less potent over time? i don’t know the answers to these questions, but the thought that something is soluble is not agreeing with the portent that water solubility is making
something spread, but is not diluting it too.
i think the original comment i read quoted that MTBE is not watered down to the point of inerting it. but it flows and STAYS in the groundwater where it has entered our drinking water.
this is not just a little bit, but alot of MTBE. i dont think there is much else we can debate on the subject. MTBE is bad for the environment, it gets into the environment in several ways, and it does NOT go away (unless chemically treated and broken down.) and water only makes MTBE ‘flow’ and does not dilute it.
The first sources listed there are leaking above and below ground storage tanks, and spills. “Incomplete combustion” comes after. There is no debate over the soluability of MTBE, it’s easily measured in the laboratory to great precision. It may be harmful at very low concentrations, which can happen easily with leakage. It certainly becomes more dilute the further you move from the leak, but that can take miles. It is relatively inert, doesn’t react, so once it’s in the water, it’s there for a long, long time.
the difference between soluble and miscible are the important words.
soluble means to mix and dilute.
miscible means to mix “but keep the original chemical composition”
it appears that the MTBE story has more than meets the eye on the difference between the two types of solutions.
this mentioned page is from 2003 (or so) this info has changed since 2006, when MTBE was outlawed, and replaced with ethanol. i believe there is more info (probably not easily obtainable) which would clarify this, it is just hard to find.
if i recall, the tank leakage and boat emissions has been proven to have been lowered down the importance of the sources recently, thus the banning of MTBE.
did you know, more gas is spilled each year by recreational boaters than in the yearly total of oil spills and overflows from oil transportation?? it seems recreational yachters can’t quite seem to get the ‘hang’ of filling the tank up, without that last ‘burp’ out the fill pipe! http://www.gas-care.org/Press_release.htm
the ‘facts’ sometimes seems out of context with reality.
Good point on the boaters and their leaks/spills.
MTBE dosn’t burn in the engine and just “pours” out of the exhaust?
Are you aware of the fact that MTBE is a member of the family of hydrocarbons known as ethers? Ethers, all of them, are explosively flamible. Spray some starting fluid into a fire if you doubt it.
If substance A is soluble in substance B, that means that A and B can mix, but with a limit of how much A can be disolved into B. A good example of this is table salt and water. At room temperature you can disolve small amounts of salt with no problems, but if you add enough you’ll find some of it just refuses to disolve.
If substance A is miscible in substance B, that means that A and B will mix in any and all proportions. The classic example of this is Ethanol and Water (There are some issues with this example, but it’s good enough for demonstrating the idea). You can mix any amount of ethanol with any amount of water.