Not entirely true. Vans recently announced that all Lycoming FI engines sold by them will no longer have a choice of which fuel injection system to use. All will come with the Airflow Performance system. AFP has for decades supplied their products with seals, O-rings and diaphragms made of fluorosilicone [generic Viton]. Use of these components negates this issue, as regards engine components of the system.
And the nitrile rubber fuel hose, and the nitrile rubber orings in the fuel selector, and the nitrile ruibber in the mechanical fuel pump, and what rubber type in the boost pump. etc etc.
I didn't say it did. Don't know about the fuel selector, more than 1 available. For rubber fuel lines, use automotive fuel injection hose, or better yet, Teflon lined hose. For the O-rings, you would need to replace them with Viton units.
Our local EAA Chapter visited GAMI last Fall, and they had said they had purchased a fuel tank wing section from a wrecked Cirrus and were doing their own tests on that; so will be interesting to see what they find out...
I can't believe this sort of testing wasn't part of the development lifecycle from day one. Paints, primers, hoses, sealants, o-rings, gaskets...all should have been part of the validation process for any new fuel, and it seems incredibly irresponsible, if not outright amateurish, for them to not have done thorough compatibility tests.
EFI is a step not far enough. I would hope that in some dark corner at Lycoming someone is working on a transforming our traditional engines to direct injection and end the problem. We could be flying high compression engines on 93 octane pump gas.
I've been holding 91 E10 for nearly 800 hours, ( 12 years), not sure what you are talking about?
Direct injection might give the normally aspirated engines a bit more margin (they can run on pump gas already with a little care). But it won't cure the problem for forced induction engines (Big twins, SR22T, ect).
Swift and Lyondell both believe they can make 100 octane. I believe that both rely on ETBE in their formula. ETBE is widely used in auto fuel (but not in the US) versus ethanol. We should let this play out.
I do not believe that methanol is in pump gas in the US. If true I would be surprised.
not according to swift. The have stated that their 100ul has no aromatic solvents. Watch the video posted above. Sounds like they have done a lot of testing.
Not really surprising when you accept specialized boutique fuel formulated by a very small business that specializes in making metal fuel injectors. We really should leave this task to petrochemical companies that know what they are doing and actually employ chemists and chemical engineers. I put this blunder squarely on the faa.
That comment was related to g100ul, not e10 fuel. I was referring to the fact that even if you had special rubbers that could handle it, it would still eat away the proseal in your tanks and therefore still unusable.
The situation is bad enough that the Cirrus Aircraft company came out and said its airplane can only use 100LL. Cirrus knows a lot about the non-lead avgas from the testing.
You are correct, it is ethanol. That is what the E in e85/e10 stands for. Methanol would be a far better product to add to our fuel, but you can’t easily get it from corn, so not happening in america.
Larry, do you remember the original "gasohol"? It was what the U.S. was converting too in the 1990's and was a gasoline methanol blend. Methanol production for auto fuel use came to an end when underground fuel tanks started leaking it into the groundwater. Hundreds if not thousands of tanks were dug up and replaced. Many gas stations went out of business because they couldn't afford the installation of double wall tanks with leak detection. Methanol is not environmentally friendly. It is a volatile organic compound and can cause blindness among other health issues. It also burns with a clear flame which is hard to see in daylight, which complicates fighting fires.
Your right, I meant ethanol (alcohol).
I believe you are confusing methanol with MTBE, methyl tertiary butyl ether. Very different chemicals. MTBE was used as an oxygenate. These fuel tanks were leaking before mtbe but in that mtbe is water soluble and has a very low odor threshold it was noticed in the aquifer. It continues to be used in large quantities in car gas but just not in the US.
Hi Steve,
Swift's 100 octane fuel relies on ETBE instead of high aromatics. It's smell is even more potent than MTBE so I'm curious how they think it's not dead on arrival in California where MTBE is banned for making drinking water unpalatable.
Lead is also banned in California. We have been using it there for decades since being outlawed and it’s horrible effects are well documented . We are not getting 100 octane fuel without using something that someone iss not going to like. Good news is that the FAA seems to have the authority to do whatever they want. Even the epa can’t get them to do anything.
This is the key point. Other than making you change your oil every 50hrs leaded fuel doesn't hurt anything.
I think the fact that oil companies haven't is telling. Every refinery has a lab and a pile of chemical engineers on staff. The previous refinery I was at makes something north of 40 different blends. The majority of them are blended in the pipelines. And they can pipe from Texas to California. Avgas isn't very high volume but the margins are high.
