in germany you can buy 102 octane unleaded fuel with no Ethanol mix into the fuel
this is well known. The bigger concern are some additives in the fuel, like solvents. ARAL do mix Ether in the gasoline 102, not Ethanol.
How does affect Ether seals and fuel lines ? Maybe Excellium fuel from TOTAl is an alternative ? I Have asked TOTAL if they mix solvent in their fuel. But they do not reply.
Note to self – only drive car along bottom of valley parts of Switzerland in summer.
Shorrick, trick in Switzerland is to free wheel down the mountain and have a coffee below the freezing level. You should then have enough fuel defrosted and ready for the day!
Or buy mountain fuel with the anti freeze additive…I learnt the hard way, took a few mornings to figure it out!
Mogas is usually checked for ethanol content. Our airfield gets it from the standard dealers and has its own equipment. The official name is EN228.
EN228 only defines octane number (95). There can be lots of different alcohols in it, not just ethanol.
EN228 is a very precise standard with prescribes a lot of properties and has a min and max value for most ingredients. EN228 is a very uniform fuel and allows for up to 5% ethanol (variants with more ethanol exist, different name). Obviously there are other alcohols in there as well but it’s ethanol we care about. The water mixing test is rather good.
The better way to check etahnol content is to use foodindustry colours in the small amount of test water. These solve into water but not casoline. Also use a half a liter bottle with long neck and mark there the test water amount when upside down and also scale for addition of ethanol. Fill half full with gasoline, shake and turn upside down, let it settle and find out how much more you have colored liquid in the neck of bottle.
I use as mogas the Shell Formula V, because of octan no and less than 1,5% etahnol.
In the IOF 360 ( FADEC) we have yearly used only 1/3 of Avgas from total consumption.
I think it is safe to say that none of these engines, turbo’ed ones included (except maybe a very few special variants) are octane-critical, so you can use RON95 with no problem if you keep RPM and mixture in the normal range. No need to buy the highest octane stuff for that reason. However, some brands tend to give guarantees concerning maximum ethanol content only for the premium fuels.
I tried food dye. The one I bought dissolved in alcohol-free petrol, so no use. We use test buds sold for the purpose at present. We have used the water test.
I thought ethanol had an octane improving effect so if the industry were logical, we’d change hoses and gaskets for a couple hundred $$ and use MON100 cheaper ethanol-based fuel.
Instead of that, we stick to avgas which is more expensive, just in case one of 10’000 users flies at FL220 and fears his gas will evaporate all at once.
Which us exactly what numerous permit flyers have done.
