Caught this on the news earlier:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/e10-petrol-consumer-protection-and-fuel-pump-labelling

E10 is a 10% bioethanol mix with fossil fuel petrol and I assume exhales less noxious stuff, so guvmint think it's good.

Many tales of how Ethanol affects seals in engines, so should we be concerned..?

Part of the problem is increased fuel consumption - by approx 10% - they don't tell you that usually.
Nor do they mention that much of the bioethanol comes at the expense of food production.
I think most of our petrol is E5 now.

Modern stuff will be ethanol resistant, but in classics on original seals and gaskets it’s a nightmare. Fuel taps, tanks and carbs all suffer and the forums are full of owners with problems over it.
I also think it leaves a mess around tank fillers. Nasty stuff.

Turned my petrol hedge trimmer pipes to jelly on the inside. An
old length of air horn pipe , and back to the hard work.

There is something like 600,000 cars on the road that can't run on on it, the government are hinting at tax incentives for fuel retailers to start the ball rolling ------ I might be being cynical but this seems like another government con trick ( i.e. Promotion of oil burners) to promote car sales and all the associated industries, it will also give them a stronger Brexit hand if the German Government think there will be a boosted car market in the U.K.

Forgot to say that super unleaded was meant to be ethanol free, not sure if that is still the case but I do use it wherever possible.

Ok - I have posted some questions and always got some useful (and sometimes entertaining replies) so I feel its time to pay that back with a few hopefully useful points - and I know about this stuff from my work (fuels specialist).

The EU has targets to reduce net CO2 emissions and this is being done by 1) Targets for vehicle improvements to reduce fuel consumption - we all like that cos it saves us money - and 2) producing fuel from renewable sources.

Renewable means that you (in theory at least) grow plants which absorb CO2 from the air - turn it into fuel and that makes CO2 when burnt but more plants will absorb that CO2 - so if you got right theres a net zero CO2 production - but we are way of that thus far. Carbon just goes around the cycle. This is unlike normal fuel where you take carbon out of the ground as oil that took millions of years to accumulate and we have just about burnt it all in 100-150 years putting CO2 up into the air. Bad news...

The only commercially viable way of getting renewable fuels into petrol is using renewable ethanol and for diesel its biodiesel (aka FAME). You cant turn renewable materials into normal petrol/diesel without a lot of processing. They do for aviation as aircraft cant deal with ethanol or FAME but there's a cost (my specialist area).

EU rules are inching up the levels...hence 5% Ethanol to 10% and FAME from 7% to 10%.

These changes will always have side effects same as removing lead (valve recession) and also removing sulphur (pump lubricity failures in the early days)- hardware has to catch up. But as you rightly say older cars have a problem. Ethanol is a problem to cars not designed for it - you can add ethanol is very corrosive towards aluminium in certain circumstances to list of seals etc.

Ethanol will not improve emissions of a car as such - its just that using carbon for energy that comes from plants that have taken it form the air means a net CO2 reduction.

You will loose some mpg but not 10% - it will be a bit less than that but cant be bothered to calculate it tonite- ethanol has a lower energy content than normal fuels.

Oh and to the comments about taking plants for fuel rather than for food - yes its an issue. Just google ILUC - lessons have been learnt.

These things still wont be enough hence the talk of electric cars...

I would say that renewable fuels have their pluses and minuses - I'm not taking sides and I'm not a tree hugger. I'm just stating a few facts and not taking sides. Its an emotive subject for many reasons so please don't have a pop at me.

Sorry its a long post but thanks for reading if you got this far and hope it helps understand the issues.

Graham

Not quite true. Yes Ethanol has a lower calorific value than hydrocarbon fuels but it is only about 75% , so if E10 is 10% ethanol by weight then the effect on the total mixture will be approx 3% . Most of us would struggle to measure the difference in real world fuel consumption. There is a lot of dis-information put out there by oil companies who have their own interests to protect.

I gave the prime fuel research testing station in Germany 5 unmarked 205 litre drums of fuels, only we knew which which of them contained ethanol. They could not distinguish between any of them despite running short and medium term tests on both engine rigs in the lab and really world trails with road cars.

I did a lot of work on using ethanol which was distilled from excess wine production and using it in the gasoline pool in the 19980s and 1990s. The oil companies hated it , they don't want to buy in components, and there are real problems in the distribution system where a lot of petrol is stored on water beds, (so the ethanol is absorbed into the water and lost from the fuel) The oil companies wanted it all converted to the corresponding ether ETBE which is more miscible and not leached by water.

Ethanol does burn "cleaner" than hydrocarbon fuels (it has oxygen in the molecule so doesn't take as much from the atmosphere) . In theory the engine should run cooler because of the higher latent heat of evaporation.

However the negatives are the effect on some rubber and other gasket compounds in seals etc, some alloys may be marginally more suseptable to corrosion , and its lacks any lubricating properties.

It has been present in fuels all over Europe for more than a decade now (including the so-called "Super" petrols.

I don't subscribe to theory of food v fuel as most of the ethanol produced for fuel is made from agricultural surpluses (at least in Europe) . Now whether farmers should be subsidised for producing surpluses is another matter entirely and here I would agree.

I should have added that one plus for ethanol is that its boosts octane rating - Lotus had an experimental car that run on almost 100% ethanol and because it was designed for it they could a very good increase in power....

Andy G - good points.