Do your own experiment removing alcohol

pnichols wrote:

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
It takes a substantial amount of alcohol to remove water from gasoline.

Therefore it takes relatively little water to remove lots of ethanol.

David ... you lost me right after those two sentences.

Ya mean that when alcohol "removes" water from gas - the alcohol is destroyed as far as any further being a provider of energy for the engine it's about to enter?

I ASSUME that the alcohol molecules are still effective as an energy source for an engine even after those molecules have bound up some water molecules.

:h

You don't have to ASSUME anything. You are correct! Pure gasoline (E0), for all intent, can be assumed to be a non-polar solvent. Water, on the other hand is a highly polar solvent. That's why to two don't mix well. Ethanol is kind of between the two, hence the term . . . . miscible . . . with both water and gasoline. Ethanol attracts water into the mix without technically "bonding" with water. Because the two are both polar, they attract each other and improve the solubility of water in gasoline. Methanol is the same as Ethanol in that respect. The water simply mixes with the fuel and passes through the system, then out the tailpipe instead of collecting on the bottom of the fuel tank, float bowl, or any other low points in the fuel system. The ethanol is burned as fuel and creates heat. It doesn't matter if it attracts water to it or not. The heat of combustion vaporizes the water before it leaves the engine.

Chum lee