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MG Midget and Sprite Technical - Ethanol in superunleaded, an update from BP

I emailed BP on 22nd March and received a reply this morning.

Original email from me:

"Hello,

hope you can help. I'm looking to find out how much if any, ethanol is contained in BP superunleaded petrol?
Many thanks and kind regards,

Jeremy Tickle"

BP's response:

"Thank you for your email concerning the fuel sold by BP.

Bioethanol is present in nearly all regular unleaded petrol being sold by fuel suppliers in the UK today. Bioethanol is also becoming increasingly present in the UK’s super-unleaded (premium/higher octane) petrol too; this is because, in compliance with the UK government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, fuel suppliers have been required to increase the quantity of bio fuels in their transport fuels since 2008. As a consequence, the inclusion of bioethanol in our BP Ultimate Unleaded supply chain is an evolving situation and we are therefore unable to give you categorical assurances as to its absence or presence. However we can assure you that – as required by the The Motor Fuel (Composition and Content) (Amendment) Regulations 2013 – the content of bioethanol in our BP Ultimate Unleaded gasoline will never be more than 5% by volume until 1st January 2017 at the earliest.

All BP fuels, Regular and BP Ultimate, contain special ingredients which have cleaning and protection properties for the engine. BP Ultimate has been rigorously tested on a wide range of vehicles, covering hundreds of thousands of miles, in various conditions. Its advanced formula offers a wide range of benefits compared to ordinary fuels, including better fuel efficiency and enhanced performance, , all of which give long term benefit and value to the consumer and their vehicle.

BP does not supply 100% bioethanol as a retail fuel in the UK.

Thank you for taking the time to bring the matter to our attention and for allowing us the opportunity to respond to your concerns at this time.

Kind regards,

Erika


Retail Customer Care Team



Not exactly helpful is it? And a little concerning that BP doesn't know what's in its fuel, especially as they have a Government target to meet.
For now I'm assuming it does contain ethanol so it's tme to change supplier and a change to R9 fuel pipe.
Anyone know currently if Tesco superunleaded has ethanol added?


Jeremy Tickle

At least you'll be safe in the knowledge that your engine is clean, when the car bursts into flames!
Dave O'Neill 2

However we can assure you that – as required by the The Motor Fuel (Composition and Content) (Amendment) Regulations 2013 – the content of bioethanol in our BP Ultimate Unleaded gasoline will never be more than 5% by volume until 1st January 2017 at the earliest.

what a sack of lying DOG SH#T

1... WHEN YOU INTENTIKNALL MURDER somewhere 36 of your employees for the purpose to make bonus money... FU×K YOU

LETS face it... when it comes to the truth and they say some stpid crap like "" i can assure you"" automatically invision homer simpson smoking a crack pipe with a dildo up his donkey... laughing at you histerockly behind you back saying to him self i cant belive they think ill ever tell the truth

sorry andy

You wasted your time ...what you got was a $2 diseased crack whole giving you a gum job...i hope you used a rubber before opening your email from those sacks of dog sh*t

prop
prop

'At least you'll be safe in the knowledge that your engine is clean, when the car bursts into flames!' LOL :)

Prop - I take it BP isn't your favourite fuel company??
just to add to your dislke, the CEO of BP is going to take his £14 million ($19,985,840)pay despite shareholders voting against it!
Jeremy Tickle

Not just my least fav fuel compny... my least fav corp period

it just appeals me to no end that they can cut and cut and cut and create an extremely dangerous situation that murders 24 men in texas city texas then less then 2 years murder another 12 men on an oil rig in the gulf of mexico and no criminal liabity... its an accedent

my donkey... when cut and cut and jeperdiose the work site for the purpose of profit... thats not an accedint thats criminal behavoir... china would have removed there heads

that company has to much legalized corruption because they csn bribe us congress and senate and call it funding caimpain cash
prop

Just chatted (online) to Bianca at Tesco and she informs me that both their unleaded fuels (regular and Momentum) contain 'up to' 5% ethanol, so Tesco petrol is out for me.
It is surprising that the two petrol retailers contacted so far seem unable/unwilling to say exactly how much ethanol is/isn't in their petrol.
Shell have also been contacted - await reply.
Jeremy Tickle

Something else to consider... the fine print legalise

when they say its upto 5% ethinol... what does that AREALLY mean

on a box of cerial yesterday it said on the box less then 1 gram of suger per serving

severing size... not a bowl but per tablespoon and did not include all the other non suger sweetners like fuitlcose and gelitin and beet suger... so yeah its health as a chochlot bar

but... you need to hire a lawer and have them phrase the question so you get the answer thwt you need...sadly as BP learned there is no negitive concequince for lying to your face... so no need to tell you the truth ... infact lying is good for there bottom line

i would never trust anything BP says ... the others mmm there probably okay
prop

Jeremy,

I'm afraid you are being very naive here. Oil companies never divulge the full and detailed ingredients of any of their products and it's been that way the 40 or so years I have been in the industry.

They know exactly what is in each product, it's just they are not telling!!!!!!!!!!!
Eddie Cairns

Prop

You cannot get way with writing total bilge all of the time. If anyone was to blame for Mocando, it was Transocean employees - all of whom were er....of American nationality. BP guys actually did a fine job of capping the well after the Transocean guys failed miserably to do and after they used the wrong cement. Naturally these facts did not appeal to the US government who sucessfully used some extremely spurious legal processes to blame BP 100%, and thus begin a claims process which would shame the most corrupt of countries.
M Ogden

If it takes 3 paragraphs to give you a simple numeric answer, they are lying. Just ask any politician

Cheers

Gary
79 MGB
gary hansen

Prop, if you are going to rant please use the spell checker.;-)
d brenchley

My suspicion is that the amounts vary, which is why they are not being specific. Targets are set by government and will be different in the UK from USA and from EU. Ethanol isn't a product that can be stored indefinitely in large quantities and nether is the production a process that can economically be switched off and on. So the amount of Ethanol put into petrol will vary as consumption changes, week by week. Its probably based on predictions of demand and dependant on other factors like temperature, storage time and other much more complex factors throughout the supply chain. They will have a target figure (or range) but what goes into your tank could well vary from one delivery to the next so they won't want to commit themselves to a set figure.
GuyW

Guy good points - and I suspect that the proportion is also driven by economics - whether it's lower cost to use ethanol or petrol as the energy source at any point in time.

One point I don't understand though is about ethanol being unstable - chemically in bulk it's incredibly stable (you don't worry about a metal capped bottle of wine getting weaker over a 5 year horizon), it might evaporate from an open tank but in a modern western tank farm that's not going to happen. My experience is in fine chemicals not petrochem but I think the same rules apply.

I'm also always sceptical about the ' modern fuel with ethanol in goes off on standing' argument - I've given it the benefit of the doubt maybe ethanol does react with some of the petrol components, but I'd like to see any references as intuitively it's not obvious that would happen.

as always happy to learn from the knowledge base here (especially those with petrochem experience) - but to a simple fine chemical chemists I'm not convinced...!
timmyk

Tim,
I wasn't really thinking of volatility. When I said <<Ethanol isn't a product that can be stored indefinitely in large quantities>> I was imagining the size of the large storage tanks that would be needed to buffer against changing consumption over a longer period of time. And I suspect there would be safety concerns over very large bulk storage facilities of that sort. Bottom line, as you say, will be economics driven.
GuyW

Guy

you are dead on...plus we in the usa also have bi year reformulation in the spring and in the fall where they change the fuel to match the seasonal climate and fuel is also designed here to match various regions of the usa... some times even from one large city to the next large city with in the same state... granted not noticable from my perspective but i guess it has to do with the cleanliness of the enviro

Tim

come to missouri ... haha there really is a big differance between fuel that is pure and fuel that is impregnated with alcho

pure fuel last along time ive got a gallon thats now approaching 1.5 years old and its as good now as when i bought it but the common stuff is only good for about 3 weeks in the summer without additive.. and left long enough (a year ) it turns into a white hard powdery crystal

D.

Yes... ive been expermenting with various new UI keybords on my phone... not found any i like to so far.. ill try to pay closer atten. To my spelling

prop
prop

Tim, I understood that the issue with ethanol in fuel is that it absorbs water. Ethanol is very easily miscible with water (as I'm sure you know) and in a tank with a large air space, such as a half empty car fuel tank, it will absorb water from the air. This degrades the fuel and also can lead to corrosion in the tank.
Mike Howlett

Mike,
that's one of the problems, others include ethanol quickly degrading hoses (R9 fuel hose is apparently resilient though) and reacting with soft alloys such as brass and aluminium; hence my enquiries as I'd rather use a fuel with no added ethanol.
Jeremy
Jeremy Tickle

We are semi lucky here with fuel choice with options available nearly everywhere
At the bouser at most servo's there is the choice of 98 ron 95 or regular (91)
Most new cars here run on regular except some of the performance types like WRX's etc
Probably about half the suppliers sell ethanol E10 but BP, Shell and Caltex are still on the good stuff
The cars that suffer the most from ethanol added fuel are the early 80's injected cars like Porsche and Mercedes etc - The ones without O2 sensors----
They run very lean/hot at highway speed
I've witnessed a 911 Porsche with the muffler glowing red hot and plastic melting off the bottom of the rear bumper bar just above it-------scarey
Ethanol-methanol will certainly react with alloys if left sitting over a period and the alloy gives off a paste like goop that clogs things up but I'm sure brass is safe

willy
William Revit

Update from Shell - all their fuels contain ethanol.

'Dear Jeremy,

Thank you for contacting Shell.
Our current petrol grades, including Shell FuelSave Unleaded and Shell V-Power Nitro+ Unleaded, in all of UK contain up to 5% ethanol as stipulated by the European fuel specification EN228 and UK government legislation.

I hope this helps and should you need further assistance, please feel free to revert back to us.

Best regards,

Rachelle

Technical Helpdesk - UK

I rather like the idea of reverting back to them :)
Jeremy Tickle

Jeremy.
First, thank you for your work in contacting the various fuel companies.
Second. B*ll*cks! I thought Shell V Power had no Ethanol in it, so I have been wasting my money putting it in my Sprite hoping to protect the fuel system. I was doing it because I read about a year ago that Shell V Power had no Ethanol in it. Hey Ho. We're doomed, doomed I tell ye.
Bernie Higginson

Can't help but wonder whether or not all this hype about ethanol and older cars is just that - a load of hype - just as the leaded/unleaded/valve seat conjecture was.

Have a read of this:-

http://www.fbhvc.co.uk/legislation-and-fuels/fuel-information/_file/194/dissertation-pdf-pdf/

Simon
Simon Wood

Interesting reading though with so much uncertainty concerning the results and test methodology, a bit dissapointing.

The conclusion that ethanol doesn't eat brass is obvious but old carbs have a lot of brass/brass and brass/alloy surfaces rubbing together which was completely abscent from the test.

A more thorough real life test is needed and I think we are all involved.

Rob
Rob aka MG Moneypit

Me too Bernie, except in my case it was BP rather than Shell.
I may change tack a little and email the remaining fuel suppliers with a question from a classic car enthusiast rather than just asking baldly about ethanol content.

Jeremy Tickle

I don't think it's hype.

The fuel pick-up pipe in my strimmer dissolved, a couple of years ago. Also, the carb diaphragm in my lawnmower needed replacing.

I have a 1996 Honda 650 and the handbook says that the warranty is invalid if fuels containing ethanol are used. Honda must have a reason for saying that.
Dave O'Neill 2

Simon,
interesting paper but I wonder why Matthew used 4* fuel from the Buckingham FBHVC approved petrol station rather than adding ethanol to normal pump unleaded? The one sample of unleaded in the test, he chose not to add ethanol. It seems strange as most of us won't be toddling down to Buckingham to fill up, we'll be filling up with unleaded nearby.
Unfortunately all the 4* and the unleaded samples evaporated before the conclusion of the test - gosh petrol evaporates - no sh#t Sherlock.
The petrol was then refilled and put in sealed containers but there seems to be something questionable about the 'replicates' - were they all replaced or just some?
The testing rig seems rather basic too - pieces of string tied to cork covered housebricks, is that really scientific - I've no idea I'm neither a scientist nor an academic.
Finally I'm not convinced that merely soaking a brass component in a petrol/ethanol mixture replicates the heat/loads/stresses/pressures experienced by those components when working in situ.
I am open to persuasion if I've missed something - usually something obvious.
Jeremy Tickle

I can assure you... its real
prop

I wouldn't really expect 5% ethanol (up to 5 they said) to cause you any trouble if you are using the car. I have had trouble on occasion with vehicles that sat a lot, but that might have been at the time that other oxygenators besides ethanol were being used (like mtbe etba?).

I had a friend who made anhydrous ethanol to sell to the oil companies back in the 80s, and I used to get it from him to add to my fuel to run my Saab 99 (Triumph TR-7 engine). I ran it at least 20% to boost the octane. I never had any trouble, it stopped the pinging, and significantly boosted the fuel mileage (from 24 to 29). However, I would not call it a scientific test and I only did it for about 30 or 40,000 miles over about 3 years.

I don't know why Prop has so much trouble. Either something is different about the Missouri fuel (it is usually one of the cheapest states for fuel) or something is strange about his local environment.

I just fired up my 68 BGT a couple weeks ago and have been driving it around. I had started it up and moved it across the parking lot a few times over the last few years, but other than that it has been sitting idle with the same half a tank of fuel in it since I parked it in around 2009 or 2010.

I threw in a couple gallons of fresh fuel before I drove it away the other week, and then added about 5 more fresh gallons a few days later. I'm sure the half tank must have had 10% ethanol since you have to go to a lot of trouble to get anything else around here. And, it was sitting outside all that time so there was no controlled environment. I've put a couple hundred miles on it, and it seems to be doing pretty well.

Charley
C R Huff

I suppose that I only view this from the perspective of my classic cars. I've never stuck anything other than ordinary pump petrol in the frog & elan. The frog has an H4 carburettor complete with cork seals, lots of alloy and brass bits, an alloy supercharger, copper fuel pipe, SU-type fuel pump, the elan has Dellortos with many rubber brass and alloy bits, a nylon fuel line, diaphram fuel pump etc.
The paper that I referenced in my earlier post is the only piece of "academic" work that I have read on the topic and I would agree that it's far from a comprehensive piece of work.
It's all very well to say that this or that bit has dissolved in my strimmer or lawnmower but you are only speculating at the cause. Petrol has always been a pretty good solvent in my experience, how do you know that ethanol was the cause?
Old cars are old cars. Just that. Bits wear out, deteriorate and fall off and always have done. Plastics & rubber have always had a finite life.
I'm in no way suggesting that ethanol doesn't have a detrimental effect on our cars - I don't know, and I'm not convinced that anyone else out there knows the extent of the issue either.

Simon
Simon Wood

Update from Tesco - here's an extract from the reply:

'Dear Jeremey
Thank you for your email.
I understand from your email that you would like to know if our Momentum contains ethanol or not.
I have looked in to this for you today and can advise that the Momentum does include 9% Ethanol as it makes the fuel burn hotter.'

Also had a response from Esso and it's mainly good news:

'Dear Mr Tickle,
Thank you for contacting Esso Customer Care.
The majority of unleaded 95 Octane petrol sold in the UK contains 5% ethanol as required under the Government’s Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO).
There is currently no requirement for renewable fuel (such as ethanol) to be present in super unleaded (97 grade petrol).
Esso super unleaded petrol (Synergy Supreme+ Unleaded 97) is ethanol free (except in Devon, Cornwall, the Teesside area and Scotland) and we have no current intention to add ethanol to Synergy Supreme+ in other areas of the UK.
We would therefore advise anyone who has concerns about the presence of ethanol in petrol to use Synergy Supreme+ – providing they do not fill up in Devon or Cornwall, the Teesside area or Scotland.'

So it seems Esso super unleaded unless you live in Teeside, Scotland, Devon or Cornwall, has no added ethanol.

Jeremy Tickle

Odd that Tesco says ethanol makes the fuel burn hotter. Isn't the opposite true?

Just as an experiment I ran my old Saab 99 on 100% ethanol for 10 or 15 miles, which required using part choke on the Stromburg carb to make up for the BTU reduction. One of the results was that the coolant temp gauge never moved off the bottom peg. I was left with the impression that the entire cooling system might have been unnecessary.

Charley
C R Huff

That is good news, for many of us.

I have been using Esso super unleaded, so will continue to do so.

I am also considering contacting Honda UK to see why they don't like ethanol.
Dave O'Neill 2

Charlie
It's my understanding that petrol with a little bit of ethanol, like the 5%-10% most seem to be using will make the mixture slightly leaner and therefore hotter
But it's false economy as you have less power and use more throttle for the same performance and use more fuel overall
willy
As you say straight ethanol/methanol will run cold and you need heaps of it
Our old racer ran straight methanol, it had a 25 gallon tank and on full hook it would use the full tank in a 100 lap race--25 miles
Good economy that, one mile to the gallon but sh@t it was fast--
William Revit

Willy,

I had not thought of the leaning effect it might have. Has anyone run the different fuels with with a pyrometer attached to see the actual exhaust temps?

That bit about the fuel mileage going down is not necessarily true, speaking of a blended fuel. I believe it should be true that you loose mileage if you compare identical octane levels because of the lower BTU value of the ethanol. But, if you add your own ethanol as I did to boost the octane level, then you can tune for the extra octane and increase the fuel mileage.

The extra ethanol I mentioned a few posts back allowed me to move the static ignition timing from 9 deg BTDC to 18 deg BTDC and gain 5 mpg while eliminating the ping that I had at 9 degrees.

Charley
C R Huff

Charlie
Have a look at my post about halfway through this thread
Cheers
willy
William Revit

That's good news Jeremy. The better news for me, is that the Esso station is closer than the Shell one.
Thanks again for your persistence.
Bernie Higginson

Bernie,

thanks - glad it helps!

Jeremy
Jeremy Tickle

So, can anybody give me a definitive list of which UK fuel companies and what grades do not have added ethanol? As well as ESSO, my understanding was that Texaco don't add ethanol
John Turner (Midget & MGB)

This thread was discussed between 18/04/2016 and 05/05/2016

MG Midget and Sprite Technical index

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