Making your own ETHANOL FREE Gasoline!!! it's easier than you think!! 

I used to work as a lab worker in an organic extraction laboratory. Your gasoline, being cloudy is contaminated with emulsified water and needs to be "dehydrated" with anhydrous sodium sulfate (it grabs a lot of water from solvents). And, likewise the top layer in your one gallon plastic jug is the gasoline with emulsified water. Look at the lower water layer in the one gallon plastic jug and you can tell about 1/2" to 3/4" of water is emulsified in the gasoline. If you let the gasoline/water mixture sit overnight you'll probably notice the gasoline is clear again. Myself, I wouldn't use the cloudy gasoline in any engine because it has a ton of emulsified water along with ethanol in it! If the gasoline isn't perfectly clear then it's contaminated with water!

I am giving you a big thumbs up for all the informative comments listed below. The explanations of engine knock, vaporization, ethylene glycol, ethanol subsidies, adding dye to the separation mixture, the safety warning about storing chemicals in unlabeled containers, etc. You have an excellent, well informed community following your content, and I commend them.

You can also contact the fuel jobber and buy ethanol free fuel direct from them. The ethanol is not added at the refinery. The jobber adds it as it is needed.

MAN I LOVE YOUR VIDEOS THANKS ANDY

I've ran 10% ethanol in every engine I've ever owned and it's literally never caused me any problems. Old timers will say it gunks up carburetors or it's bad on small engines and that's a load of crap. Your carburetors gunk up or your jets clog because you left gasoline in your mower all winter long. Run the fuel out before storing and these issues will disappear.

Why not just to purchase it as needed?

I have a small airport about a mile from me and I buy my chainsaw and splitter gas from there. Aviation fuel doesn't have ethanol, is higher in octane and has stabilizer in it already. All this for about two dollars more per gallon.

I would probably have just siphoned the pure gasoline off the top down to maybe within an inch of the separation line and then kept the remainder for mixing into the next batch.

I’ve been purifying my gas for 2 years now I use a 5 gallon plastic carboy from Amazon and it has a petcock on the bottom . Some recommendations use distilled water mixed with blue or red Food dye the dye is water soluble and when the mixture separates it gives a clear delineation of the water/ ethanol mixture verses the purified gas. Ethanol burns slower and is part of the octane rating of the gasoline so if you start with a 93 octane rated fuel you’ll end up close to 87 octane. Note octane is actually isooctane which inhibits the rate of combustion and thereby decreases engine nock. Finally it takes a minimum of 12 hours for complete separation of the gas from the ethanol /water mixture . I always draw off the pure gasoline 24 hours after mixing.

Glycol (antifreeze) works better than water on separating and with 87 octane you drop to 84 and with 93 it will drop to 91-90 ish on octane. I work for one of the big oil company’s and we test loads that head to the stations for ethanol content this way. It can help a fella make some 90 rec when you are in a pinch.

My bud used to do this, had a big canister with a petcock on the bottom to drain the water out.. used to leave the water/alcohol mix in a gas can in the barn...... gas can would mysteriously get emptied every now and then and one of the local kids would be selling a dirt bike or go kart a few days later..... he would buy them and flip them.

Andy now to continue on..Take your ethanol/water mix and for that quantity add about 2 maybe 3 cups of salt and a small amount of food coloring and stir to dissolve it in the mix..then let it sit and the ethanol and the water will separate...then draw it off just the same. This method is called salting out.

Add some Toluene to the fuel and it will bump the octane rating right back up.

The gasoline should be clear and have a straw color. Yours appears to have entrained water in it making it appear cloudy. As an old aviation mechanic that did fuel samples every morning on our Coast Guard aircraft, I wouldn't use that gasoline in my engines. I'm a bit skeptical on your theory of removing ALL of the water from the gas...the entrained water still exists. Still a cool video.

Put a gas shutoff valve on your mower. Shut the valve off and run the mower til it dies after your last mow of the season or any time you are not going to run the engine. My honda started up first pull after not using it for a year. ALL gasoline will gum up your carb. Long before they came up with ethanol carbs plugged up.

And Racor makes a water separation funnel. You could run the "pure" gasoline through it as a 2nd step just to make sure you have all the water our. Racor water separation filters are common items for boating.

That's cool man, so what's that corn liquor that you extracted taste like without the gas in it?🤔

When we had purple gas on the farm in the 70's and 80's, Dad got some clear jerrycans, filled them and left them out in the sun for a couple days. The purple dye would fade and we had red gas for the car.

I would like to share with you my method for getting ethanol free gas. I go to the corner gas station and buy ethanol free 93 octane gas. WHY, do people, as evidenced by all the RU-vid videos, go to all this dangerous screwing around? 87 octane in the vehicles and 93 octane in the small engines. I’m 75 and life has taught me at least one thing. Keep it simple; if a choice between just buying ethanol free gas or setting up the lab and going through a big rigmarole, I’ll buy the gas and be done with it. You were correct in warning, “Don’t do this in your house.” For those home chemists that didn’t get the message, I can’t wait to see who mixes up a batch in their basement and blows themselves to kingdom come. Be careful out there folks!🔥=🚒

Actually discovered this technique by accident, my riding lawn wouldn’t run, so ended up emptying the gas into a old glass wine bottle, then had to stop for the evening... came back to it the next evening and noticed the amount of separation, out of curiosity I decided to add the separation of gas back into the lawn mower and I’ll be damned if it didn’t crank up ! 😮

Well there isn’t any debate - once they added ethanol I started having difficulties for small engines.

Never had a problem with E-10 87 pump gas in my lawn mowers. I had a 20 yr. old Craftsmen lawn tractor that I used pump E-10 87 gas in for it's 20 yrs. Took the carb off to take a look and it was shiny clean aluminum. Just don't store it with the carb full of gas.

It would be better and easier to use a jug that is tapered at the bottom and has a drain valve. Then you can more easily get the water out completely.

OR you can just go to a station that has ethanol free gas. Starting to be more and more of those popping up.

Were lucky to have Ethanol free Boat Gas here runs about $1.00 a gallon more but my mower loves it

Here in Mississippi, regular 87 octane is sold for $3.00 per gallon. The ethanol free gas is $3.30 per gallon (actually, these numbers have gone a little higher recently). So you can pay a 10% premium to keep that ethanol out of your gas, or lose 10% by removing 10% of your purchase when you remove the ethanol and throw it away. At least here, the smart move is to pay the premium and save the labor of removing the ethanol, unless of course, you have some use for water infused ethanol.

I've been using a 30 gal. barrel(clear?)to get rid of ethanol for a long time.Ethanol will destroy my fiberglass saddle tanks on my bumpsides(3).When taking my trans-Texas jaunts,I put 5 gals. of Avgas and a squirt of 2-stroke lube to get my mileage back up.Of course,funding 60-80 gallons of pushwater is getting harder on a pension.

I've made Coleman fuel from gasoline using heat to evaporate the lightest elements of the gasoline from the additives. Gas evaporates at a fairly low temperature. I used a cup warmer to do it to avoid flame and auto-combustion.

There's something new to me and I've been around a good bit! Thanks Andy. Luckily I got an ethanol -free station in the nearest town but this is very interesting and for me a useful thing to know. Three cheers!

Since the ethanol acts as the antiknock agent do you add other antiknock components? In the 1970's I worked for Ethyl Corporaton and at our site we made Tetra Ethyl Lead and Tetra Methyl Lead for gasoline.

Have been removing ethanol for all my power equipment for over 2 years. Pure gasoline will absorb 120 PPM (Parts Per Million) of water. Because ethanol is hygroscopic (absorbing moisture from the air), gasoline with 10% ethanol will absorb 7,000 PPM of water. If left to stand, this is the cause of "bad gas". As an aside, fuel used in non-jet aircraft engines is ethanol free - you would not want your carburetor to freeze up in flight.

It takes more energy to produce the alcohol then you get out of it. We should be using the corn to feed people not burning it....just saying.

What happens to the octane number when you do that? It is quite common to mix in 20-30% ethanol (E85) in regular petrol, to raise the octane number here in Sweden.

Everyone recommends a different amount of water added- everything from 2 oz per gallon up to a quart that you use here. I think about one cup per gallon is enough.

It’s such a shame that our government did this to us! Corn is food , not fuel !

Andy I drained my gas and used blocks. The neighbors came when I put it in BBQ.

Chemical Engineer here. Yup, this'll work. Like the Comments say... some things you can do to help recovery. But, the science works.

Now you need to make moonshine Andy, interesting vid.

There seems to be some unnecessary wastage in your process. When you're done with the siphoning of the separated layers, what you had on top in your gallon jug is wasted gasoline, not ethanol. Ethanol and water do not separate. I think you would have been better off to siphon off the gas on the top layer to somewhere near the water/ethanol layer.

We ran a Texaco station in the early days and the fuel was the best there was, our Skycheif was 104😮 octane and no ethanol, no corn , no fumes, just straight up gas that was clear like water, you could even burn it in your gas lanterns

Pretty cool. All I have is a lawn mower and I know just how much fuel it takes to mow my lawn. I run E85 and just let it run out of fuel when I am finished.

Thank goodness we have a Bucees, they sell 87 E0 for a very reasonable price (10 cents more than 87 E10)

Personally I blame squirrels

Incredibly dangerous not necessary thing to do in the first place.

I personally wish they go back to regular and unleaded

You never want to run chainsaws on anything less then 90 octane. Unless of coarse you don’t care about fixing them all the time. 😂

Pretty cool but it seems to me that it would be easier to pull the gas off the top than the water from the bottom.... Otherwise good info for sure.

More and more I'm needing to make a biodiesel stille

So what happens to the ethanol? How do you get rid of it? Is there a use for it?

Why not just dose the E10 gasoline with StaBil and avoid the problem in the first place?

Very ingenious like it. I hope you and maybe David Vizard could show use how to make your own octane booster

What you need is a chemistry set separation funnel. You can bleed off liquids out the bottom of the separation funnel with much better precision and save yourself some gasoline.

So what your telling us is you need to start with a higher grade of Gasoline and expect it to drop a few numbers in the final product. if it's really an issue you can add some Toluene to bump the octane figure up a touch.

A) 15 minutes is *NOT NEARLY* long enough to settle out all the suspended ethanol/water mix. Give it 24. Must be clear. B) Starting with 87 octane is a *BAD IDEA!* Results in ~82 octane = predetonation = connecting rods through the crankcase. Start with 92-93 octane premium. End with 87-88 octane ethanol free.

Tax free booze ! Absolutely 2 parts for me 1 for the car. The dryer beads is what you 💲 when separating water from alcohol.

90 Octane alcohol free is available at the pump near me, I only use it in my two stokes, and fill up with it for storage over the winter. Cool vid tho.

I absolutely HATE my lawnmower, but I still wouldn't put 87 octane in it. All my gas equipment gets 100 LL aviation fuel.

Here in Norway we only get E10 and 98 Octane. Once they discontinue the 98 I guess I'm gonna have to create a facility for streamlining this process.

You can also buy a separatory funnel and stand and do it a lot easier. You would just drain the water and ethanol out of the bottom. Also, letting it sit longer would result in better results as far as the gasoline is concerned.

I do the same thing with my old mower gas, no matter what you do it gets water in it! Put the gas in a large clear bottle like a dish soap bottle key part here is the valve, add gas and water shake let separation happen turn bottle over and open valve top squeeze out water… your done, put the rest in your tank! You could just decant your mix like wine but you may get some water in your tank, if your not very careful. Dont worry about octane its a mower after all.

I am what is commonly known in some circles as first.

That's serious Kool.😂😂😅

Great video, I thought you was going to use crude oil to make it 😆 🤣 😂 lol

If you get a container that has a drain, you can just drain out the water.

Funny, I was just thinking of trying non ethanol gas for my 408 ci Nova (plus octane booster). Pretty slick Andy, pretty slick!

If you voted correctly and lived in a conservative state. We sell ethanol free gas.

So ,do you have a creative use for the ethanol, looks like it would be easy enough to siphon it off.

I knew I shouldn’t have skipped those classes.

AWESOME!!! Somebody needs to make an automated gizmo to do that. They'd sell a bunch to the automotive scene. Ethanol is the scourge of performance cars everywhere.

Ethanol is not just soluble in water, it is miscible, so mixes completely at any ratio...so I think the layer in the milk jug at the end is some gas, rather than ethanol. It wouldn't mix just long enough to transfer out of the gas can, then suddenly divide into separate phases just because it's in a different container. I use avgas in mowers for the last mow of the season, not because it is 100 octane, but because of its storage properties, it will store a long time. Even when very old, it doesn't form varnish, just blue goo that easily dissolves in more gas. This works much better than gas stabilizers, which I don't think much of. The 100 octane is unnecessary but harmless. You might expect harder starting due to its slightly lower volatility, but I haven't noticed, even in snowblowers here in PA winters. I just mention the avgas because ethanol makes unused carbs dirty even faster than auto gas did before ethanol was added, which was bad enough!

Good stuff Andy. Pretty cool😎

"I'm gonna show you how to do this." "Don't do this at home."

Ethanol has been used since the 1930s, when people actually paid MORE For it to get the Higher Octane Rating from it. As far as it being hygroscopic and drawing moisture out of the air, that is one of the biggest LIES floating around out there. MAYBE if you had a 5 gallon bucket of Ethanol setting out on a Foggy Night with No Lid on it, it MIGHT draw a few Teaspoons of water over night, but Breathing in & out through the Tiny Vent Tube in a Sealed Gas Tank, It's NOT Going to Happen even after several Years. I proved That Myself with my 1937 Ford Truck that sat for 14 years in a damp shed (water running through it every time it rained, and condensation dripping from the roof) with a broken set of points in the distributor. It sat there in those damp conditions all those years with a quarter to maybe 1/3rd tank of a mixture of E10 & E25 and when I finally got around to rebuilding the distributor and getting it running again, there wasn't even a Trace of Water in the sediment bowl on the fuel pump. Plain and Simple, it DOES NOT Draw Moisture out of the air, though it DOES ABSORB Water that inadvertently gets mixed in. www.theautochannel.com/news/2016/03/18/209988-ethanol-does-not-suck-water-out-air.html IF you are finding water in your fuel, it is likely because it was already there When You Bought The Gas which has been an On-Going Problem for as long as there have been Gas Stations, especially those in Low-Lying Areas where it's easier for Run-Off to get into the underground storage tanks. This Has Happened for as long as I can remember (early/mid 1970s) and longer (if you ask your older relatives) with gas stations having to pay for engine repairs on customers cars that filled up on water and damaged their engines, along with getting their tanks pumped out and refilled with fresh fuel. As Ethanol DOES Absorb Water, (think of the bottles of HEET you purposely poured in your tank to soak up the water and thaw out frozen fuel lines with Regular gas) which basically just Buys More Time for those stations in Low Lying Areas as it can absorb up to (I believe it is around) 5-6% water by volume before Phase Separating and dumping the water to the bottom of the tank where it causes the Exact Same Problems it did with Regular Gas. THAT would be roughly 1200 Gallons of Water in a 20,000 Gallon underground tank, meaning the stations that were notorious for being shut down due to water in the tanks can now go Months or Years Longer selling Watered-Down Ethanol that is constantly being refreshed every time THEY Fill up, until they get caught in a Flood Situation where they get More Water than what the Ethanol can Absorb. As for Separating Your Own Fuel to be "Ethanol-Free", Why Would You Want to LOWER The Octane Rating, and/or Pay Extra for Higher Octane Fuel just to get a Usable Octane after you separate out the alcohol . That's just Throwing Money Away to get rid of something you Used to Pay Extra For to the tune of $2.00 - $3.00 Per 12 Ounce Bottle of HEET.

What happens with all the waste mixture?

Just do that 9 more times and you have a full tank

I run all engines on e85. Lawn mower, snowblower, chainsaw, generator, my regular truck and car. Cold weather starting requires more gasoline mixed in. 15 years and no issues.❤

I always just mix about 2oz (1/4 cup) of marvels mystery oil in my small engine gasoline...seems to do the trick (and stabilizes the fuel for storage) and does well at lubricating the upper end too

Don't try to store it. You have removed most of the corrosion inhibitor, detergent, binding agents, antioxidants, stabilizers and more. Burn it all up quickly and run your fuel system dry when you're done. NOTE; If yoor that hellbent on worrying about alcohol gas just buy equipment that can handle it. Go Old School Carburetion w/ adjustable fuel mixture screws or jets and learn to tune.

😂😂😂😂😂😂 buying and loosing 15% of what you purchased when premium fuel without the ethanol issues is cheaper 😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅 .

I noticed your Reher-Morrison shirt... I recall and still have a picture of Lee Shepherd and me standing next to his Pro-Stock Camaro with PRO 1 on the windshield.. I'm standing on the shotgun side and Lee on the driver's side.. Looks like we both just got out of the car.

What is the rag on ethanol? It's just an octane booster. Many drag racers use ethanol-based fuels. The Efree gas just uses another chemical mix to raise the octane. Granted it's not good if not used within 3 months or so as it absorbs water from the atmosphere, but it's just fine for daily drivers. I do use it for all my power tools, '53 Ford and boat. But Efree adds very little for most users.

Heres your huge mistake! The 87 octane was achieved by adding ethanol. If you remove the ethanol you have reduced the octane to the point that the fuel is useless! Back to chemistry school for you!

I just removed the ethanol from 16 gallons of gasoline ⛽️; and stabilized it with STA-BIL 360, SeaFoam and a little Red HEET. This should get me through the winter… in the spring… what ever is left will go In my car… and I will start again… ⛽️

Add a tap to the bottom of the vessel (Separator)with a valve that way you can drain out the water/alcohol mix without all this siphon mess. As a side note add some acetone to reduce the chance of engine knock.

That is not pure gas. Depending on the amount of aromatics in the gas, it still holds water. If you had 100 percent phase separation, both mixtures would be a lot clearer then what you show.

Very nice science experiment Andy. Pretty cool. Thank you. Take care, Ed.

What do you do with the water/ethanol waste?

Why do you want to take the ethanol out by doing so you are lowering the octane I have a lot of yard machines 2 walk behind self propelled mowers I riding mower a mc lane edger approx 50 years old 2 stroke weed eater and leaf blower I live in oklahoma all we have is 91 octane we do have ethanol free gasoline but I don't use it I use e 10 91 octane in earthing for my 4 stroke engines I mix 1 Oz of marvel mystery oil per gallon I also use steel safety cans this is important because they keep the atmosphere out. I NEVER HAVE ANY FUEL RELATED PROBLEMS.

Taking out the Ethanol ..also takes out the OCTANE. For small engines ...maybe OK..maybe not.... For cars...this is a big sin it seems, ,,.especially older cars....with higher compression. This video is ill conceived and leaves out this important issue of octane,. ..,which is why the 10% Ehtanol is in the gas to begin with. Better solution is to add water mixer..ie...stable....so the water is mixed..and does not separate out....rather than kill your octane . ..and paying full price for it, ..doing a lot of work to create a lot of detonation. ???

I don't find ethanol in gas to be a bad thing unless you let it sit for a long time. Course that doesn't happen in Florida when you have to mow every

1 So the price of the gas increased by 10%-ish (~10% loss) + your time. 2 How much you reckon the octane is lowered? 87>>85..84? 3 Have you captured the "ethanol" mix. Alcohol has alot of uses. Burning, cleaning, deicing. 4 Basic use for low compression engines. Due to lowered octane. Cheers

Proof i guess would be to check the specific gravity of the water before and after to see how much ethanol is present.

If you let it sit longer the gas will become clear. I have been doing this for years at the dealership when cars come in with contaminated fuel. It takes several hours but the will be clear. Then I run it truck.

If done on a regular basis, it would behoove one to have a container with a quarter turn spout at the very bottom; much easier to drain than siphon.

So when i fill up at gas station how are they getting just 10% ethanol from tank in the ground? You think it would separate like in your jar in the ground. Hmm

Didn't come on the scene in 2008, it was widely used in the 90s. My friends dad is the one who developed it and was using it for racing. He passed away in February. He had a full size lab in his garage to make it at home still as a hobby. But he spent over 30 years of his life running and setting up production plants to make ethanol.

Or maybe just go up the road and buy 5 gallons of non ethanol gasoline at a gas station. Probably cheaper in the long run. Just because you can do something does not make it the best option. You kill what little octane you have the way you are doing it. Most commercial ethanol free gas has at least 90 octane.

So what do you do with all the bad water you contaminated??? Dump it out back in the creek or down the storm drain I would suspect. NICE! Considering you can buy non ethanol gas for small engines at auto parts stores, Tractor Supply, most outdoor equipment dealers, and more and more gas stations are now selling it, why would you do this neanderthal method? You need higher octane? You can buy race gas online in any configuration you could want...leaded, unleaded, with or without ethanol, E85, ultra high octane. Name your poison. Be ready to pay though that is the price you pay for something special. You make your own gas this way you are asking for trouble.

I'm lucky I live in Arkansas and non ethanol is everywhere both here and in Oklahoma but if I go to Arizona there's almost none west of Amarillo until Holbrook, AZ (about 550 miles) and none at all in Phoenix. Of course there's no way to do this on the road but I'll remember this if it pure gas becomes not available anymore. I have two old cars and a riding lawnmower.

I just use Startron or another enzyme bio catalyst. It's like 8 bucks and treats 80 gallons. Then bump up octane with toluene or other organic solvent. No judgment, i like the science, but mixing gas like that is one spark away from a horrible death.