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?
In: 101
Ethanol is there to increase the octane rating of the gasoline. Contrary to popular myth, a high octane rating doesn’t make a fuel more powerful, it just makes it possible to use safely in a more powerful engine.
Other additives were used in the past, but they were worse for the environment: TEL (tetraethyl lead) led to lead poisoning, MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether) is water soluble and led to groundwater contamination, and BTEX (a mixture of benzene, toluene, xylene, and ethyl-benzene) was also toxic.
If you want to learn more about gasoline, this history lesson is quite interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVa-RPNWO6k
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