Fuel Storage

[carbon60]

I keep 40l of petrol/gasoline in my rig, pretty much all the time. I do try and use it on a regular basis, but sometimes it sits for a while. So, two questions:

- Should I fill them with ethanol-free fuel, to avoid deterioration and contamination with water?
- Should I add stabilizer?

Thanks all,

A.

 

[kmlacroix]

yes

 

[bfdiesel]

Yes

 

[rayra]

Depends. Good sealed metal or mil spec MFCs you don't really need to. Either prevents loss of volatiles or absorption of water by the ethanol. Easiest solution is just cycle one of your cans at the start of each month. That way the fuel in them is never more than a couple months old.

 

[jeep-N-montero]

I run ethanol free in all of our motors that we know will sit for more than a week or two, filling the 80 gallon tank on our boat at the beginning of summer at $3.05 per gallon put a nice dent in the wallet, but knowing the motor will run as it should every time I go to start it is worth the extra price premium over the ethanol crap.

 

[carbon60]

Depends. Good sealed metal or mil spec MFCs you don't really need to. Either prevents loss of volatiles or absorption of water by the ethanol. Easiest solution is just cycle one of your cans at the start of each month. That way the fuel in them is never more than a couple months old.

I use a pair of beat up Scepter MFCs with new Viton gaskets. They seem not to off gas at all. So how long can I go? (I understand that a month is best.)

Thanks for the response!

 

[comptiger5000]

We've been using ethanol gas in the boat for over 10 years without a single fuel related issue. We add sta-bil whenever we fill the tanks just to be on the safe side. The tanks get filled in late October before storage and usually don't have any fuel added to them until mid-summer.

Ideally, in your case, I'd cycle the fuel every couple of months just to keep it fresh, but if you needed to store some for a year, add stabilizer and it should be ok. It also wouldn't hurt to start with a higher octane fuel than you actually need, as fuel does slowly lose octane over time.

 

[rayra]

I use a pair of beat up Scepter MFCs with new Viton gaskets. They seem not to off gas at all. So how long can I go? (I understand that a month is best.)

Thanks for the response!

I've seen anecdotal reports from people doing empirical tests on some prepper forums of up to a year in MFCs, untreated. (shrug). I've got a half dozen plastic blitz 5gal jugs that I use STA-BIL in, crappy CA fuel blends, ethanol the works, and I try to dump one in my tank as part of the first fill of the month, taking the empty with me to refill. So I've got about a 6mos rotation cycle going on and no trouble. Been doing that for about ~5yrs. I just wrap some masking tape on the gas container handle and write the date on it when it was filled and dump the oldest one in my tank when I do it.

 

[rayra]

We've been using ethanol gas in the boat for over 10 years without a single fuel related issue. We add sta-bil whenever we fill the tanks just to be on the safe side. The tanks get filled in late October before storage and usually don't have any fuel added to them until mid-summer.

Ideally, in your case, I'd cycle the fuel every couple of months just to keep it fresh, but if you needed to store some for a year, add stabilizer and it should be ok. It also wouldn't hurt to start with a higher octane fuel than you actually need, as fuel does slowly lose octane over time.

The culprit is the thin plastic containers. The fuel itself will keep well enough in a sealed metal container, and fine in a nice thick MFC. Things get worse with the thin blitz / copycat plastic jugs. The deal with the ethanol-tainted fuels is twofold. Both the greater volatility of the ethanol and that ethanol is hydrophilic (bonds readily with water).
A full and fully sealed container solves those issues to a great degree. The keeping the tank full over the winter is a good way to prevent moisture condensation inside an empty vented tank.

 

[comptiger5000]

Yeah, ethanol and water is a blessing and a curse. It'll harmlessly absorb some amount of water just like old-school dry-gas, but if it's in a well vented container, it can pull enough water out of the air after a while to saturate and cause a nasty separation.

 

[Herbie]

+1 for dating your containers and just rotating your stock. You're likely buying gas on a weekly or biweekly basis anyway...

 

[zelatore]

Working in the marine world I ALWAYS recommend using an ethanol treatment in our crappy CA gas. In fact, many new engine manufacturers also recommend it right in the owner's manual. But boats are a little different deal than storing gas in a well sealed container. Boat fuel tanks are generally vented directly to the atmosphere and in a high-humidity environment. Picture a 100-500 gallon tank stored away for a few months only 1/4 full - the tank will 'breath' a lot of moist air in/out as it heats and cools through the day. We run water separating filters on boats, but when you try to run what amounts to jelly through them it just doesn't work.

Would you have a problem storing non-treated gas in a WELL SEALED container for several months or even a year? Probably not. But why risk it when treatments are cheap and easy? Cheap insurance.

(was just on a boat Saturday where the fuel filters were full of clear jelly like goop - the results of ethanol)

 

[rayra]

Been a lot of anecdotal reports of small engines - particularly 2-stroke - having a lot of grief with the switch to ethanol-adulterated fuel. Apparently the ethanol kills some of the lubricity and the engines chew their guts out. I used to try and avoid them especially in my very old cars, but it's become almost impossible to find ethanol-free fuels around me in L.A. And also reports of reduced fuel economy in those older non-computerized motors. Ethanol burns but apparently with less energy per volume. So E10 or E15 gas doesn't perform as well. The new flex fuel vehicles compensate on performance, but I've not seen anything written about the economy side of things. It fact there seems to be an absence of mentions about that.

 

[comptiger5000]

IIRC, in a perfect case, E10 should have about a 3% fuel economy penalty compared to E0. I've tested it in my Jeep and never found enough of a difference to definitively pin it to the fuel.

 

[jeep-N-montero]

Been a lot of anecdotal reports of small engines - particularly 2-stroke - having a lot of grief with the switch to ethanol-adulterated fuel. Apparently the ethanol kills some of the lubricity and the engines chew their guts out. I used to try and avoid them especially in my very old cars, but it's become almost impossible to find ethanol-free fuels around me in L.A. And also reports of reduced fuel economy in those older non-computerized motors. Ethanol burns but apparently with less energy per volume. So E10 or E15 gas doesn't perform as well. The new flex fuel vehicles compensate on performance, but I've not seen anything written about the economy side of things. It fact there seems to be an absence of mentions about that.

You can find all of the ethanol-free gas pumps in your area by looking here http://pure-gas.org/index.jsp