Gas pumps selling non-ethanol in the area

[bhs7695 185]

Please check where you buy gasoline and please post here if the pumps you stop at are using a 10% ethanol blend.

 

I am trying to find stations that are selling 100% gasoline as my fuel mileage is getting its a$$ kicked with these ethanol blends. In addition to the potential problems I am reading about of how this 10% blend is destroying engines and components of cars, lawnmowers, weed eaters, etc. People I have been talking to around here in Salem are seeing more and more damage from ethanol fuels.

 

Any information you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

 

Here is a little reading info for you on the effects of ethanol:

 

http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw20090514_058678.htm

[GMan 3,569]

That article is over a year old...

[bhs7695 185]

That article is over a year old...

 

Do you think that the facts in the article have changed since then?

[Deleted Account 5,203]

I go out of my way to avoid ethanol. Not only because it kills gas milage, but because using farmland to grow crops to harvest gasoline is so far beyond stupid that it defies explanation. We have far too many people in this country in poverty and/or starving to justify this in any way.

[GMan 3,569]

Do you think that the facts in the article have changed since then?

 

No, but they have backed away from ethanol use...

[bhs7695 185]

I found this website the other day and found it very helpful. http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp?stateprov=VA

 

You can click on any state abbreviation and find the list of stations that are selling 100% gasoline. The site is only as accurate as the people who turn in the location of the stations they find that are selling 100% gasoline. There is one listed in Blacksburg, one in Christiansburg, and a couple in Salem. There is also one listed in Bluefield, VA although I believe the address listed for the station is incorrect. I mentioned those five since I spend most of my time in those areas and I can benefit from them the most.

 

For the last 12 months, I have been buying 89 octane 10% ethanol fuel for my 2010 Camry. Everytime, I would fill up between 13-14 gallons and the tank would get about 420 miles on average before the fuel light would come on. Just this past Monday evening, I bought 100% 92 octane gasoline from the Kash King beside the Shelor Motor Mile in Christiansburg off exit 118C. I can tell you that the engine hesitation is gone now and the engine is crisper than before. Also, my fuel gauge as of this morning is still a little above the halfway mark and I had driven 248 miles since I filled it up. With 10% ethanol gasoline, I would get about 200 miles at the halfway mark on the fuel gauge. It looks like I could get about 500 miles on this tank. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure the math. If you are getting say about 75 more miles per tank, that could be anywhere from 2-3 gallons of gasoline. At say $2.50 a gallon, well, the savings can add up very quickly not to mention extending the life of your engine components.

 

Here is another site that lists the potential problems cause by ethanol:

 

http://www.fuel-testers.com/list_e10_engine_damage.html

 

I found it a great cost savings to me and I thought I would share with the rest of you.

Edited July 16, 2010 by bhs7695

[keeper1 10]

rouse fuel station in chilhowie advertises 100% gasoline. they may have backed off on the legislation for ethanol (i hope they have) but it's still exceedingly common to see "product contains 10% ethanol" at the pump.

[bhs7695 185]

Yeah they are starting to back off ethanol:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071600611.html

 

Biofuel companies were claiming that ethanol boosted octane in gasoline and performance but they were lying. Think about the direct cost to the consumer everytime they fill up at the pump due to the lost in fuel mileage they are going to have using 10% ethanol.

 

I got this email a few weeks back from http://www.ewg.org

 

Subject: BIOFUELS UPDATE: ***EWG REPORT CALLS FOR END TO CORN-BASED ETHANOL SUBSIDIES

 

2010-06-15 09:56:09 EDT

 

***EWG REPORT CALLS FOR END TO CORN-BASED ETHANOL SUBSIDIES

 

Between 2005-2009, U.S. taxpayers spent $17 billion to subsidize corn-based ethanol blends, but didn't get much in return -- a reduction in overall oil consumption equal to a 1.1 mile per gallon increase in fleet-wide fuel economy, according to a new report released this morning by Environmental Working Group (EWG).

 

"Sadly, the degree of energy independence derived from the American taxpayer's massive investment in corn ethanol could have been accomplished for free by proper tire inflation and using the right grade of motor oil, driving sensibly or better enforcement of speed limits," said Craig Cox, EWG senior vice president and co-author of the report.

 

The seven-page report, Driving Under the Influence: Corn Ethanol and Energy Security, calls for a handful of recommendations, including overhauling the expanded renewable fuels standard (RFS2) to eliminate provisions that mandate corn-based ethanol and require that any biofuel required must meet rigorous environmental performance standards, and ending tax credits for ethanol when they expire at the end of this year.

 

The main problem, according to EWG, is that ethanol is not as fuel efficient as some claim. "U.S. highway vehicles burned a total 139.5 billion gallons of fuel in 2009, driving two trillion miles while getting just over 20 miles per gallon. Blended into these 139.5 billion gallons were 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol. Most people understandably think that those 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol reduced our consumption of gasoline by the same amount. The reality is far different," the report explained.

 

"The problem is that the current blend of 10% ethanol ... cuts gas mileage by almost 4%, according to U.S. Department of Energy figures. You simply can't drive as far on a gallon of E10 as on a gallon of conventional gasoline. That is because one gallon of ethanol yields only two-thirds as much energy as a gallon of gasoline. At the national level, this means that the 10.6 billion gallons of ethanol burned in 2009 displaced just 7.2 billion gallons of gasoline," the report continued.

 

Instead, this amount of gasoline could have been displaced by increasing corporate average fuel economy by just 1.1 miles per gallon, "at essentially no cost to taxpayers," the report noted.

 

Additionally, for this year, taxpayers will spend $5.4 billion for corn-based ethanol subsidies, EWG noted. "If the ethanol industry succeeds in getting Congress to extend the [tax] credit, taxpayers will be out another $31 billion between 2011 and 2015, for a cumulative total of nearly $54 billion by 2015," the report continued.

 

"It is clear that continuing taxpayer's lavish support for corn ethanol will not deliver the clean energy independence our country needs to ensure prosperity and security," Cox concluded. However, four ethanol-related groups came out swinging against today's report. "Criticizing the tax incentive provided for the use of ethanol is a misleading exercise if proper context is not provided," explained a joint statement by the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), Growth Energy, the National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association. "A recent International Energy Agency report concluded the world spent $550 billion in subsidies for fossil fuels in 2008 alone. The approximately $4.5 billion spent to increase America's use of domestically-produced ethanol in 2008 is a bargain by comparison," the groups noted.

 

"Equally misleading is a discussion of tax incentives without appropriately attributing increases in economic activity resulting from those incentives," the ethanol groups continued. "In 2009 alone, U.S. ethanol production helped nearly 400,000 Americans keep their jobs or find a new one, added more than $15 billion to federal, state and local government tax revenues and displaced more than 360 million barrels of imported oil," the groups noted.

 

"It is disappointing that some in the environmental community continue to have an irrational and unsophisticated notion of how to reduce fossil fuel use," said ACE Executive Vice President Brian Jennings. "Some say the solution is to get rid of corn-based ethanol today, in hopes that some other potentially promising, but not yet commercialized fuel will be available tomorrow. The result would be more pain at the pump and more pollution for the planet.

 

Ethanol is the only commercially available alternative to gasoline today, and removing it from our nation's fuel supply would mean more oil use -- and we ought to learn from the painful and ongoing lesson in the Gulf of Mexico that more oil is simply not a sustainable path," he added.

[Deleted Account 5,203]

Good. The less ethanol, the better.