Fuel

[amazeer]

new cars that can run on regular 91 unleaded should also be OK to use e10. (run my mitsubishi and ****box ford on it) The turbo VWs are premium fuel only.

Re my previous comment about caltex, the rating for their E10 is not on the website but I filled up there tonight, it is written on the pump 91.

[wai]

The RON is not the only thing that you need to consider when selecting a fuel.

Ethanol has roughly 30% less calorific value than petrol. Because it is a 10% blend, this is a 3% reduction in the energy available.

More important is that ethanol burns lean. When the ethanol combusts. the oxygen atoms in ethanol are released and this causes the mixture to be lean. From an emission point of view, it reduces unburnt HC and CO/CO2, but more than triples NOx because of high combustion temperatures from running lean.

Overall, you will see roughly 10% increase in fuel consumption. This can be reduced just a little by re-tuning the engine, however if you are unable to get E10 (only available in capital cities and major regional centres), your engine will then run rich.

The oil companies are pushing E10 in NSW, because there is a government mandated 6% substitution of petrol with a bio-fuel. If oil companies do not sell 6% bio-fuel, they are subject to fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. When you look at the current split of SULP / PULP, and E10, this lets them meet the 6% substitution. If it looks like the 6% substitution is not going to be met, then oil companies will artificially drop the price of E10, or even get service stations to shut down their PULP pumps thereby forcing users to buy E10.

So, it is not the RON, or any potentially corrosive effects of ethanol. or that ethanol will absorb water from the atmosphere. There are a whole lot of other issues in using ethanol blended fuels.