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Bertram31.com General Bulletin Board
Ethanol...Latest Scoop
Posted By: Harv
Date: Friday, 24 February 2006, at 11:39 a.m.
Just got off the phone with John Mcknight from the National Marine Manufacturers Association. He is well aware of the various situations concerning E10 in our gas and stated that basically it has been in our gas for almost 3 years. He pointed out that the problems may be located at the local pump that may not have been compliant with current regulations, but mentioned that most stations had to switch to new tanks prior to receiving E10 shipments. The alcohol as we all know is a cleanser, and we may have been getting whatever was being cleaned out of the local storage tank, in addition to whatever may be coming from our own tanks as well. The local storage problem should have eventually resolved itself after some time. Now as mentioned before, the mixture does not take place at the refinery, but rather at the local gas distribution centers.
Supposedly, all the transport tankers were to have been srcubbed, cleaned, and prepped for the transport of the E10 fuels.As for our more centralized concerns about our fiberglass tanks, he agreed that the older polyester resin tanks may be vulnerable to the alcohol breaking down the resin and working through the fuel systems. It appears that the older resins contained phtalates that reacted with the alcohol. On the newer vinylester type resins this reaction does not take place. His suggestion, short of tank replacement was to line our tanks with a layer or 2 of new resin or 2 applications of a barrier coat similar to what we do before bottom painting to seal the fiberglass and prevent the reaction with the older glass. I also mentioned to him that I have not had any problems yet and his response was that "It's possible nothing may happen to my tank". He also stated that aluminum may not be appropriate especially considering what may lie down the road.
Now here is where it starts to get ugly. Right now we are only dealing with E10. However, John told me that some states, Minnesota for one, have already requested implementaion of E20. He told me he has studies already taken that show that E20 will literally eat through aluminum. So basicaly, in whatever shape or other form it will take, ethanol is here to stay. And in the future, our ethanol will be coming from sugar cane. It seems that for equal given amounts of corn compared to sugar, sugar cane will yield 9 times more ethanol than corn.
I asked about any type of legal recourse and was told we could try to petition legislators to have ethanol free gas supplied to marine distributors, but he felt that he didn't see that as anything that would likely happen. Lawsuit vs. the gov't?...fughedabouttit. So the answer is this, we need to adjust and adapt, keep closer tabs on our engines, change or modify our tanks, or switch to diesel.
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