Isopropyl Alcohol, Ratio?

So it doesn’t evaporate along with the water, it allows the water to mix with the petrol enough for it pass through the injectors along with the fuel.
Interesting...s

So no need to stick anything extra in your tank as there is already a load of ethanol on there..​

 

I add when I have a full tank of fuel
an old mechanics trick that I have been doing for years

 

There is an aspect which does not seem to have cropped up in this thread. Pure water is not much of a problem, but realistically the water in petrol tanks is likely to have ions dissolved in it. It is the H+, Na+, Cl-, SO4-, etc ions which cause most of the corrosion.

 

Lot of issues raised and different views here!
My take on this -
- Adding alcohol (methyl or ethyl) to fuel in a petrol tank believed or known (through visible evidence of separation) to have been contaminated with water (e,g. filled up in the rain, poor practice in forecourt tanks or road barrel) will help to remove it IF the vehicle is used and filled up several times as the water is soluble in the alcohol and this solution is miscible with the fuel at low concentrations and so it will pull the water through the engine without harm.
However:
- alcohol is already in most petrol, so why add more?
- an insufficient amount of petrol or too much water can lead to phase separation with the alcohol /water dropping out of the petrol, and being more dense, will again sit on the bottom of the tank and eventually cause rust.
- leaving water laden alcohol in a fuel tank is not good practice as
1. The water in the solution can still induce oxidation in the steel tank, helped by the effect of the alcohol which has a tendency to strip any oleic protection from the steel
2. The evaporation of the alcohol happens at a constant rate, so over time, the proportion of water in the solution is increasing, until the point where, though there will always be “some” alcohol present, the overall properties of this part of the fuel will be the same as water =rusty tank.
New fuel that is old, if you follow, so e10 that has sat for 3 months, may have a tendency to do the same, as the hygroscopic nature of alcohol, lots of available water in the air or as condensation in the vented tank will lead to petrol that is more than saturated with alcohol / water solution and phase separation can occur.

Pete - the ionic product of absolutely pure water (no contaminants, no metals, no minerals, nothing) is limited and for e.g. will struggle to conduct electricity. In the real world however, water always has enough impurities to support major ionic activity and will readily form acids and bases with pretty much any ionic compounds.

Sorry for the long post !

 

FFS....doesn't anyone know why people put water in their drink? (and remember chemistry lessons?)

It dilutes the alcohol.

So if you have diluted alcohol, you still have effing water.

Think about it....add 5ml alcohol to 100ml water, what you got?

Yep.....sod all alcohol (5ml) and still a lot of water (100ml) in a mix, equalling 105ml.

More water than alcohol and still alcohol drawing in more water.

Go back to the 60's when drag racers and some cars ran on neat ethanol......water was a problem.

 

(4.8% and 95.2%)

 

I don't think that is quite right either, if you are working on 105ml total - which is what it would be.

 

Percentages add up to 100

 

I saw this thread and thought it was on about booze!! I was wrong

 

@chizel would say otherwise

 

It’s right.

 

According to my phone calculator, 5% of 105 is 5.25 but maybe that’s the wrong question.

4.8% of 105 is 5.04

 

He is right. 5% of 105 is 4.76% or 4.8% to 1 dec place.

 

Really??
Surely 10% of 105 is 10.5.
5% is half that, which is 5.25

 

5/105 = 0.047619047. Multiply by 100 = 4.7619047 (4.76%)

10/105 = 0.095238095. Multiply by 100 = 9.523809524 (9.52%)

 

4.8 is 4.8 % of 100

 

But not of 105.

 

Exactly
How can 5% of a sum greater than 100 possibly be less than 5???