One enemy of organic/aqueous suspensions is time. Allow it to sit long enough and it often will separate into organic and aqueous layers. Once separation occurs, all sorts of issues may appear. Another enemy that is particularly relevant to this discussion is temperature fluctuation. Since we don't control atmospheric water in gasoline storage tanks, temperature fluctuations will cause condensation, which in turn will get into the fuel. Get enough water in the fuel and saturation occurs; saturation leads to separation.
Exactly – with gasoline the separation happens almost immediately. Well, I even hate to use the word ‘separation’ – usually there is hardly any mixing – the water just falls to the bottom. When alcohol is the ‘organic’ the water stays in suspension indefinitely. At the low % water we’re talking about from moisture in the air, and general atmospheric conditions, the gasoline/water/alcohol is stable as well.
You would have been better served using Seafoam. Remember the rule that "like dissolves like." The naphthenic hydrocarbons and other cycloalkanes can conform to be much more like varnish molecules than the tiny and very polar (in relative terms) ethanol molecules. Heck, rubbing alcohol would have been better than ethanol. The isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) is also found in Seafoam and Sta-Bil ethanol treatment. These are much better alternatives to ethanol.
I’m sure many other chemicals may have been better to remove the varnish, Heck, I guess I could have just used ‘paint and varnish stripper’. But don’t miss the point…ethanol was available, it was cheap, and it worked essentially instantly. When it’s present in the gas, it helps keep the varnish solubilized before it can even form.
Here you are comparing apples and oranges. Your booze is primarily ethanol and water (plus a little flavoring). CH3CH2-OH (ethanol) and H-OH (water) are very similar in size and polarity and are 100% miscible. The long chain hydrocarbons and isooctanes in gasoiline are much bigger than CH3CH2-OH and are far less polar than either ethanol or water. The gasoline hydrocarbons are more "unlike" ethanol and water so there is a greater tendency for separation into organic and aqueous layers.
Not sure where we wound up back on organic and aqueous layers, but yes, the point is to show the difference
is apples and oranges. Long chain hydrocarbons are always breaking down into something else, getting kinked up with one another, turning into tar, sludge, varnish and generally doing strange things. Ethanol is basically ethanol unless something pretty extreme happens to it.
Here you need to realize that carburetor diaphragms are made of flexible rubber-like polymers. The glass and plastic that holds your booze, whether top shelf or rot-gut, is not used in carburetors because they don't have the physical properties needed in a carb.
I wasn’t trying to say they use the actual plastic bottle in the carburetor... though I think I did see that in an episode of MacGyver once. I was trying to emphasize that if a cheap, disposable bottle can withstand ethanol, surely the highly engineered polymers in a carb can withstand it.
High octane rating is not the the only characteristic of gasoline formulas that makes it desirable. What about total energy per gallon of fuel and mileage? Ethanol loses there.
Again, I think this is missing the point of this thread. People are talking about driving all over the county to track down ‘real gas’ and/or paying exorbitant prices per gallon …or even per quart for ‘race fuel’, ‘av gas’ or whatever. If you look at it on a BTU basis, E10 has what… 3% less BTU than ‘real gas’? Even if the BTUs converted directly to engine power, I would cut for 60 minutes on a tank of E10, you cut 3% longer or 61 minutes and 48 seconds on ‘real gas’. To me, its not worth much of a drive, or paying even a few cents more for that 1:48 … after an hour, I’m usually ready for a break anyway!
