Almost every station I go to has ethanol (up to 10%) added to gas. For a long time I had the option in my area to buy non ethanol gas but now it’s harder to find.
If a gallon of ethanol gets less mileage per volume than gasoline, then how is it better for the environment if I have to fill that much sooner on gas because the ethanol component lowers my tank range?
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Ethanol improves the performance of gasoline.
Pure gasoline, if you compress it quickly, will combust. This can be a problem if it combust too quickly in your engine. If the gasoline combusts before the spark plug sets it off (it combusts due to the compression of the piston), then that messed with the whole timing of the engine and causes engine knock, which is bad for both the engine and your mileage.
The first solution we came up with was to add ethanol, but at the time, it was too expensive. The next solution was a chemical called tetraethyl lead. This prevented the combustion from just compression and was believed to be sage. Over time, so much lead was in the atmosphere that it was having a serious impact on life throughout the world, and we traced it back to leaded gasoline. By then, ethanol was cheaper, so we switched to that, and we now call it “unleaded gasoline.”
Higher octane ratings have less or no ethanol because only low octane gasoline has that early combustion problem.
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