P4gas warning

[AFJ]

Originally posted by T. Cotten
So the boiling point of the different alcohols would affect the blended fuel, but how can we use that to detect either, in the presence of a smudgepot of other hydrocarbons?

Let's go straight to public outcry and alert the public servants that are supposed to handle such things anyway.

I wonder what my state legislator would think of the liver pic.

If you got enough of the alcohol out of the suspect fuel by getting it into the water (mixing it up and then letting it settle), then decanting off the alcohol/water mixture, then gently heating the water alcohol mixture with a thermometer in it to see if when it reached 66 degrees C it started to boil. if so, the alcohol would be methanol. If it was 78 C before boiling was evident it would be ethanol. The water component would begin to boil at 100 degrees C.

Lots more sophisticated ways of doing this but the above would give a rough indication.

If you are concerned about a particular branded gas station's fuel, just call the head office of the company. I'm sure they are always ready to check to see if the station lessee is trying to pull a scam.

AFJ

[T. Cotten]

As I noted in my second post on this thread, I did the corporate phonecall routine three years ago to the supplier of the worst of fuels, and got an elusive runaround.

Even if methanol is present, it is probably a combination of solvents that is hotter than any one alone. And methanol is the common ingredient in gasline de-icers, which never affected radiatorshop sealers before.

There has always been trace amounts of benzene left in rectified ethanol: An obvious health hazard, but not monitored for content in our fuels. It is one of my prime suspects.