TYLER, Texas — As gas prices keep accelerating, drivers want to get the most out of what they put in their engines.
As a result, some people are worried that they aren’t getting what they paid for.
THE QUESTION
A viewer emailed CBS19 and wrote, “We have seen complaints of much lower fuel economy on cars. Are they adding more ethanol and this is causing the issue?”
SOURCES
Shean Huff, a researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Robbie Russell, owner of Engines Express in Tyler
THE ANSWER
Huff said ethanol has been blended into gasoline for the last two decades. It replaced lead and methyl tert-butyl ether as an additive to increase the octane in gasoline, which prevents the engine from knocking, “because that can be damaging to the engine," he explained. "It can also cause the engine to not produce as much power or be as fuel efficient as it otherwise would be.”
According to the Department of Energy, ethanol contains less energy than gasoline, so the more ethanol in the blend, the lower the gas mileage would be. E85, which goes in flex-fuel cars, has 27% less energy than reformulated gasoline blendstock for oxygenated blending, so any increase in ethanol from the standard blend would reduce a car's fuel economy.
But Huff said the federal government does frequent testing to make sure the gas drivers buy meets its requirements. “They actually go around and they take samples of fuel at your local gas station," he stated, "and they take it back to a laboratory and they run chemical tests on it to verify that the fuel is what it says it is.”
But drivers do need to be careful about which kind of fuel they put in their car. Russell said flex fuel vehicles have engines made with stainless steel, which allows them to handle the high moisture content of E85 gasoline. If you put E85 in a standard engine, he explained, “it causes corrosion in the fuel system. And if your fuel system is not stainless steel, like the flex fuel vehicles are, what can happen. It can damage components, especially rubber components, it can cause rust, things such as that.”
But the risk of that is low for East Texans. According to the Department of Energy, there are no E85 fueling stations here. The closest are in Forney and Shreveport, Louisiana.