Ethanol Free Gas (E0) iPhone App - Good Idea?
 

I am considering building an iPhone app that displays ethanol free gas stations.

Do you all feel that this would serve too small of a target audience to be useful?

Do some states outlaw the distribution of E0 gas?

Just trying to gather some info at this stage. I'd love some input from you guys - feasibilty, usefulness, functionality stuff, etc.

Forget Oregon. Other than a few stations selling racing fuel, it's all 10% ethanol in this state.

E0 is technically illegal for on-road use in Illinois (and I thought there was a recent similar federal law). Suddenly I see it all over the place.

Anyone who drives a car older than 5 years old should use E0.

Anyone who drive a motorcycle should use E0.

Anyone who wants to get decent fuel mileage should use E0.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple disallowed the distribution of such an app because it clashes with their image.

I'd probably include racing fuel too ... but use a different map icon for these.

Fortunately I found a couple of E0 stations near my house. Amazing how much better gas mileage is with E0. Not to mention that it keeps my CIS alive.

Anyhow, I am fed up with the ethanol crap. And now they are trying to make it 15% which will reportedly reduce engine life by up to 50%. Need to research this further.

So my goal is two-fold ... 1) to help out those who prefer E0 for their cars 2) to make the politicians aware that there is great demand for E0

If Apple censored my app it could get quite interesting. I wonder if that would make national news?

Apple censors most apps.

A co-worker suggested targeting the app towards Classic Cars. Which might help with the approval process. This would make it seem like a service to Classic Cars - instead of an ethanol bashing app.

Thoughts?

Or boats - big boating community that targets E(0)

Why make it an "app" when you can make it a website? Website means more people can access it. Then use Google-ads at the bottom to generate revenue. Remember to make a "mobile" version.

Be inclusive.

In Oklahoma it might work. We have a state law that mandates all pumps must display how much Ethanol is in the gas. The two stations near my house are both E0. They have big banners out front promoting 100% gas.

Good Idea.

Better Idea.

More stations than not in OK are E0.... I have found that most gas related apps in OK suck however b/c there is not enough tech interest in the area to keep them up to date...

I'd do an app and a site. Tie them together via one database. Allow users to submit stations in order to keep data fresh.

In Texas, it is by county. Harris is a non-attainment county, so it needs ethanol. Waller county doesn't have pollution problems, so they get real gas.

there was at least one website that did that. but after a while, it seemed people stopped submitting.

I'd love to know where an E0 station was in California, for one of my older, almost never driven CIS cars. But it appears E0 is not available anywhere in Cal.

Very likely scenario.

This is why I think an app would work well. Locations can be updated on your phone with a single click (submits long and lat points) ... as opposed to having to browse to a web site and enter your long / lat. The easier it is to sumbit points, the more likely it is to survive.

I also believe that the desire to run E0 will only increase with time. I think people are finally catching on to the insanity of it all.

I'd love this. (Need an investor?) I'm sick and tired of pulling into a station and seeing the "up to 10% Ethanol" stickers. Why aren't they forced to put it on their marquee sign with the price?

Missouri Mandates 10% Ethanol

I think Iowa and Minnesota do also.

This is something I'm keenly interested in as well - I'm even willing to go so far as to home-prepare de-ethanolized fuel if that's what it takes. I've done some limited research into this (there is considerable interest in this topic in the boating and experimental aircraft crowds, among others). I'm hoping that someone with a strong chemistry/petrochemical background can either confirm or deny the following tidbits of information I've been able to discern in sifting through various websites, blogs, etc.

1. Ethanol is corrosive to standard fuel system seals, hoses and other components (I think most here know this). I suspect (but can't prove) that it may have had something to do with the "unexpected combustion" of my 951 a couple of years ago (fuel hose deterioration).

2. Most pump stations now are selling "E10" fuel, meaning it can contain up to 10% ethanol (most people here already know this too).

3. Ethanol is soluble in water. This suggests an approach using distilled water mixed with pump-station gasoline might work. However I'm not certain that ethanol's affinity to water is greater than its affinity for hydrocarbons like gasoline. In other words, I'm not certain that simply adding a bunch of distilled water to a tank of gasoline and stirring it up would force much of the ethanol out of solution with the gasoline and into solution with the water, which could then be separated.

4. Supposedly gasoline can hold up to 13% water in liquid solution at standard temperatures. Some less-than-scrupulous gas stations deliberately use water as a "filler" by dumping water into their tanks, giving them an instant 13% profit margin, supposedly... Some people claim that under engine combustion temps/pressures this dissolved water can produce highly detrimental effects (corrosion, mostly) to internal engine and combustion chamber components. Others say it's fine and cite the use of water-injected engines as proof that it's no big deal.

5. I'm also not sure to what extent solubilities of ethanol-in-gasoline and ethanol-in-water vary as a function of temperature. Depending on what these are exactly, it might suggest that heating (or cooling) a tank of gasoline before mixing it with water might yield better results in stripping out the ethanol from the gas.

6. Assuming one could obtain "pure" gasoline (with the ethanol removed), there is still the possibility that water could disssolve into the gasoline again - either due to condensation on the inside surface of the tank or as a result of the de-ethanolizing process (you have to saturate the gasoline with water before you get enough water floating around not in solution that can be used to strip the ethanol out and settle to the bottom of the tank - the theory is that you'd get a layer of (water-saturated) gasoline floating on top of a layer of water with ethanol in solution in it at the bottom of your preparation tank/apparatus).

7. I suppose if it's shown that water-saturated gasoline is bad or worse for engines than gasoline with little or no water content dissolved in it, the de-ethanolized gasoline could then be run through a second apparatus to condense out or otherwise remove as much of the water as possible before using it.

8. Since ethanol increases octane (anti-knock) rating, stripping it out of gasoline would result in lower octane gas. To boost the octane rating again, one would need to add lead or mix with another substance to boost the octane rating - particularly in high-compression or forced-inducation engines. I know some 951 guys use toluene and/or xylene to do this. Supposedly a 1:3 mixture of xylene:gasoline gives a huge boost in octane rating (IIRC something like 10 points) and a voracious flame front spread inside the cylinder... Again, not directly confirmed by me though. Point is there are ways to boost the octane rating lost by removing the ethanol - but I also don't know if tossing toluene or xylene in a tank would be better or worse necessarily for fuel system hoses and seals, injectors, pumps, etc than the ethanol...

Hopefully someone with a good chem-e background can chime in about the feasibility of setting up a small-scale home de-ethanolizer using water.

Or, I suppose those of us with non-catylitic cars can just run 100LL avgas, which has no ethanol. ;)

FWIW I like the idea of a web site versus an Apple-specific application. I'm not going out and blowing $300 on a stupid IPhone just to benefit from a resource like this, not to mention god-knows-how-much per month on a contract. Forget that.