Greetings All,

My wife and I are currently in the midst of a long camping trip in the Canadian Rockies. I noticed the output pressure from my (non-stock) electric fuel pump was occasionally dropping a little low, so I replaced the pump as a precaution. The truck was running fine all this time, so no worries there.

I'm curious about the color and light haziness of the fuel I drained in the process. I'm used to seeing a clear reddish hue in fuel. Instead, this stuff is amber and a little hazy. I let this sample sit for about an hour and no water separated, so I don't think there's a moisture problem.

As much as possible, I've been running Chevron. One tank, several fillups ago, was Shell, but that should be long gone. All the fuel I've seen is labeled as "Up to 10% ethanol". Is that amber color and light haze normal with ethanol? Maybe I've just never noticed it before.



The apparent dirt at the bottom of the cup is on the outside. Same for the water drops.

 

That kind of looks like E85 to me.

 

I would say that does not look normal to me. Could it be the blend of fuel for the Canadian Rockies?
If it burns and keeps the motor running and if you never took the sample would you have known?
Dave ----

 

The colour is normal for here the haze is not.

If you are in the lower mainland it may be normal as they put some extra crap in the fuel there IIRC.


Here in Canada I would avoid Chevon to be honest. Since Chevron is refined in B.C at the Burnaby Chevron Refinery I have no idea how they mix their fuel, but the times I have been in BC and used Chevron the vehicles ran like crap on it so I avoid it. Their Diesel fuel is ok but their gasoline is junk IMHO.


Esso, Petro-Can, Shell or Husky in a pinch is where you wanna go, my preference is Esso , alternatively Petro Can if no Esso is around.
Those fuels are all refined from Synthetic crude. Some of the off brands get their fuel from unspecified sources could be Esso could be Petro Can could be Shell could be Husky could be second string gasoline or could be PetroChina you never know what you are getting from them.


Our Fuel here was water clear until just few years ago when they legislated 5% Ethanol per batch.

Canada’s federal biofuels blend mandate stands at 5 percent renewable content (ethanol) for gasoline. This is not at the pump but per batch.
So the big guys (Husky Esso Petro Shell) usually have ethanol free premium. (Respctive of provincial laws)
Lower than 5% in regular and the stuff they sell on the open market to the off brands up to 10% Ethanol.

 

Yahoo! Mt. Dew! It'll Tickle Yore Innards!

It looks cloudy. There simple tests to check the ethanol content too.

 

And Tedster said?...

 

Tedster, do tell. Understand my test capabilities are very limited at the moment.

FWIW, the fuel/Mountain Dew in question came from a Chevron in Golden, BC. As suggested, I will try Esso or Shell for the rest of our Canadian trip. Curiously, I've had excellent results with Chevron in Oregon and Washington Other brands have given me trouble there.

 

Now this is older fuel bought in March for the lawnmower weed wacker snowblower etc so it is a bit darker than when new.

But this is what it should look like see below.

I can't recall where this came from either Esso or Shell but it is regular none the less I shook the crap outta the can before pouring.

Before we were mandated ethanol our regular gasoline was water clear and evaporated off with no left over residue at all almost as clean as lacquer thinner, the premium always left behind garbage.
Now it still evaporates off with almost no residue, and the premium still leaves behind sludge.


Here if you have gasoline that sits do not buy premium as it has self life of about 3 or 5 months tops after that it will not fire.. Regular.... well I've had have fuel six years old left sitting in fuel tanks and it fires right up. I never bother to drain the snowblower in the spring or the Lawnmower/weed wacker in the fall and both always fire up on the first pull and been doing that for the better part of 20 years with no issues..

And no I did not **** in the glass lol

 

What do you think of the haziness in my sample? The fuel came from a busy station along the main highway, so I doubt it sat long there.

I'm wondering if I should add some Drygas (or equivalent) to be safe. Keep in mind the truck has been running fine so far, although we've only covered roughly 60 miles on this batch before stopping for a few days.

 

I don't think I would worry about it to be honest. It could just be dissolving crud out of the tank.

Not to to knock the fuels in the U.S but we tend to have much higher quality motor fuels here (especially in Western Canada) and it has been a problem on occasion when bringing up vehicles up from the U.S with our Gasoline cleaning out the crud in the fuel system, this has been an issue since the US started adding oxygentors and other garbage to the fuel. Sometimes it turns the fuel cloudy till most of the crap is dissolved out. You may be experiencing this. It may just be the Chevron fuel also.

I would not worry about it to be honest. Dry fuel is just an alcohol any way usually methanol or iso

We have only been using Ethanol (except for Husky Fuels) for only a few years here.

In Western Canada the Ethanol used in fuel is not derived from plant matter but crude oil (expect Husky that also uses plant matter distilled in the LLoyd refinery).

Ya go figure that one Crude oil is cracked to light hydrocarbons then steam cracked then distilled to the Ethylene then Hydrated to Ethanol to add back in to Gasoline. Convoluted way to get a supposed renewable fuel that is actually derived from Crude oil....

 

What bureaucrat thought THAT was a good idea?

 

Uh sorry for saying it but, that would the Americans .

We were catching flak by the US media Dem politicians wacko enviromentalists for the Oil sands and for not even making the most basic efforts by using Renewable content in our fuels.

The politicians at the time knew Ethanol and renewable content in motor fuels was a farce as the bulk of the Ethanol used in motor fuels is made by Hydrating Ethylene derived from crude oil.

All the crops in the US could not make enough Ethanol to satisfy the Ethanol requirements in Gasoline. And Canadian Refinery's were already making Ethanol on a large scale for US Customers so it was a relatively painless process here.

The Canadian Gov't had to legislate a minimum content it to get the heat off their backs from the wack job environmentalists the U.S media and the Dems that were in power at the time. Our minimum Ethanol content is a not really monitored and it is sort of done on the honour system with the refiners So ya 5% per batch may not always be case.

 

Interesting thread. Thanks for all the great info. Filled up with Shell today. Wish I had some simple means to check for haziness with this batch.

 

After reading matthewq4b's post above, I did some research about Canada's ethanol 'situation', for lack of a better term. I did read the ethanol content isn't regulated very closely, and as it turns out ethanol is cheaper than gasoline so there is a suspicion among market analysts that many stations are selling gas with ethanol content much higher than 5% to not only stay above the 5% aggregate mandate, but to also lower costs. I did not see in my reading anywhere that Canada's ethanol is coming from crude, but I only did a couple hours of research.


So back to the original topic, that fuel sample could very well have much more ethanol content than what you think.

 

Plant matter based ethanol is cheaper as it is just fermented much like liquor. Crude based ethanol is not in most circumstances.
But in Western Canada ,Alberta and Sask, ( B.C is the west/left coast) we don't have the climate to raise large tracks of high sucrose content crops, things like Corn or sugar beets are the most common and highest yeild feed-stocks for Ethanol facilities. What high sucrose crops we do raise (basically just corn in one area in the southern part of the province) is used for human consumption and animal feed.

Since most all of the crude we have here is heavy crude pretty much all the refinery's are not just refinery's but also upgraders. The heavy crude is upgraded in to light synthetic crude by replacing the missing hydrogen molecules in the hydrocarbon chain. The Synthetic crude is then refined in to lighter hydrocarbons gasoline Kerosene Diesel fuel etc.

The equipment in place to upgrade the crude is the same as needed for producing Ethylene and the hydration in to ethanol, additionally Ethylene is an important part of the every day modern world you handle and touch products where Ethylene was a base component in it's manufacture all day long and are doing so right now while reading this post. Both Canada and the US are the largest producers of Ethylene on the planet.

So here it is far cheaper to produce Ethanol from crude than from plant matter as we just don;t have the material readily available for feed stock short of importing it.
This is also why the refiners will scrimp on Ethanol content when they can as it costs them less to make gasoline with lower ethanol content than higher content ethanol.

Now the Chevon refinery in B.C has access to a large supply of high sucrose crops, as the lower main land grows this stuff out the wazoo as they have the climate for it, we don't here. So Chevron may be over loading their fuel with Ethanol. This would make sense as I have found the best motor fuel in Canada both diesel and Gasoline to be in the 3 prairie provinces (Alberta Sask and Manitoba)

I do know for sure neither the Scottford Refinery (Shell) the Strathcona Refinery (Esso) or the Edmonton Refinery (Petro Canada) use plant based Ethanol for their fuel all of it is derived from crude oil. The Husky plant in Lloydminster does use plant matter in addition to Crude to make Ethanol.

The fact that Ethanol can be and is derived from crude oil to add to gasoline is not something the media or the greenies want to advertise and I would almost say try to suppress. As it makes the whole save the planet and carbon reduction argument for legislating it non sequitur