Bingo! Who is the stupid idiot that allowed this to happen?! I was shop foreman at a big and busy auto dealership when Ethanol showed up. There began a steady stream of broken down cars being towed in. All of them with wasted fuel pumps. The pumps were made of aluminum and the “new gas” was corroding them. Why? Precisely because, “Ethanol enables gasoline to mix with water.” It wasn’t the Ethanol that was eating the fuel pumps, it was the water! Just about all fuel tanks have tiny amounts of water that stays on the bottom and never gets sucked-up by the pump. Of course, the biggest reservoirs of water lies in the bottom of those massive underground tanks at your local gas station. The addition of Ethanol practically sucked-up all that water and pumped it into the customers gas tanks. So, the gas stations got their water removed for free while vehicles were breaking down all over the roadways.......... not from the Ethanol corroding the aluminum but from the water now mixed into your fuel system, because, “Ethanol enables gasoline to mix with water.”
“...’Ethanol enables gasoline to mix with water.’ “ [HandyDandy, post 63]
Ethanol does not allow water to “mix” with gasoline, not in the sense of dissolving or entering solution. It emulsifies water - acts like detergent or soap, breaking water down into very small droplets. In an engine fueled by gasoline, the droplets are so small they no longer sink to the bottom of the tank, so the fuel feed system sucks them up, pumping all of it to the engine to be mixed with air and burned.
Most early ethanol problems with car engines occurred because of that detergent effect: either the fuel retailer did not monitor contaminant levels in their supply tanks, resulting in more water and other crud getting sucked up into the dispenser pumps and put in customer vehicles; or the ethanol/gasoline mix cleaned the water and other crud clinging to the walls of the car owner’s fuel tank and feed lines, which then got trapped in the fuel filter, clogging it. Fuel starvation.
Forum members should use information on the fuel-testers.com site with caution. It contains a number of technical errors. For example: all alcohols do not cause engine problems. Gasline antifreeze contains methanol, which emulsifies water into gasoline much more thoroughly than does ethanol (which has a higher molecular weight), so all of it passes through fuel filters more easily.
Ethanol is not permitted in aviation gasoline because its vapor pressure is higher than gasoline; its flash point is lower; freezing temperature and pour point are different too. Aircraft engines are subjected to a much wider range of operating environments in terms of air pressure and temperature. The risks of vapor lock and pour-point elevation are much greater than for ground vehicles.