“We’re happy to build new equipment for new fuels with increased ethanol but we will not sit idly by and put our customers’ safety and economic interests at risk.”—Kris Kiser, Outdoor Power Equipment Institute
The small engine-ethanol issue has gone national with a recent report on U.S. National Public Radio featuring an instructor at WyoTech automotive school in Laramie, Wyo., the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute’s executive VP of government affairs Kris Kiser and Ron Lamberty, a spokesman for the American Coalition of Ethanol.
Under the provocative headline “Ethanol Could Kill Your Small Engine,” the story is available as an audio podcast on the NPR web site (marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/30/pm_ethanol_kills/), while a full text of the interviews and feature are available here at powerETblog.
For those who don’t make the link to NPR’s web site, it’s interesting to note that Kiser has the first note in the comments section following the feature. As he’s mentioned before repeatedly during presentations and interviews, the small engine industry isn’t anti-ethanol, but its also very pro safety and pro product performance.
As Kiser says in his comment, “”Outdoor power equipment manufacturers are not anti ethanol and can design product to run on a wide range of fuels and ethanol levels. We do not object to increasing ethanol levels to meet government mandates,” Kiser says. “Quite the opposite, equipment manufacturers will gladly produce new product for customers to meet new fuel requirements. Our main and continuing concern is simply our customers and their safety. The fact is that running existing equipment—boats, snowmobiles, ATVs and non flex-fuel automobiles—on fuels that they were not designed for presents very real safety and performance issues.”
Here’s the full text of the NPR radio feature:
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: Thirty-six billion gallons — that’s how much renewable fuel the government says the U.S. must produce by 2022. And here’s an unexpected consequence of that ethanol mandate: Alcohol is murder on lawnmowers and small engines. Mechanics insist that as gasoline blended with ethanol takes over at gas stations, small engines across the country will start choking to death. Wyoming Public Radio’s Peter O’Dowd reports.
Peter O’Dowd: At the WyoTech automotive school in Laramie, Wyo., Larry Wostenburg likes to conduct experiments with engines for his students. Today’s test: how much ethanol a small engine can take before it breaks down.
Larry Wostenburg: We’re going to put a little choke action on here and start this baby up.
Wostenburg pours alcohol into a lawnmower’s fuel tank. His supervisor Jack Longress explains why using too much ethanol can destroy this kind of engine.
Jack Longress: It’s a recipe for disaster because, eventually, when those pieces get brittle they’re more susceptible to breaking.
Alcohol makes engines run dangerously hot. It melts rubber components. Longress says use anything higher than 10 percent ethanol on small engines long enough, and the insides will start to rot.
Longress: The corrosive properties, what you’d see is, much like what you see on the top of dirty battery terminals.
Drivers of flex-fuel cars don’t have to worry much. Their on-board computers can regulate fuel mixtures. But small engines like WyoTech’s lawnmower don’t have those features. They’re more likely to malfunction if they’re filled with the wrong blend, and broken engines can mean injured operators. That’s just one of the reasons why Kris Kiser is so worried. He’s with AllSafe, an advocate group for small-engine manufacturers.
Kris Kiser: What were concerned about are mid-level blends entering into the marketplace in advance of consumers being educated about their use and what their affects will be.
Kiser says millions of chainsaws, lawnmowers and boats could be vulnerable to death by ethanol. This year the government ordered the production of 9 billion gallons of renewable fuel. A decade from now, that number will grow to 26 billion gallons. As the mandate expands, Kiser says higher blends of ethanol will be pumped from every gas station in America. And unless people know what they’re doing, he says they could easily fill up with a blend far too potent for their machines.
Kiser: If they drive up to a pump and they see E-20, E-30, E-40, I don’t think they know what that means. Even if they do know what it means — that E-30 means 30 percent ethanol in the gallon they’re producing — if they are selling it at the pump, I think there is the assumption that it’s OK, that it’s going to work in whatever I put it in.
Ron Lamberty: That’s kind of a moot point. We’ve already got those concerns.
Ron Lamberty works for the American Coalition of Ethanol. He points out that consumers are quite capable of telling the difference between diesel and regular fuel at the gas station. He says America’s well on the road to using more renewable fuels like ethanol. Small engine manufacturers can either protest, he says, or start improving their products.
Lamberty: If we always listened to the naysayers, we would still be sitting here with leaded regular gasoline in the United States. We’ve got to move forward and the small engine guys have to come along.
Critics say they might come along more quickly if the science were more definitive. No one really knows exactly how sensitive small engines are to ethanol. The standard threshold for lawnmowers, for example, is 10 percent, but our experiment showed it could run on a much richer mixture.
The Department of Energy published a study on ethanol in small engines this fall. You can check just how deadly the fuel might be to your old John Deere.
In Laramie, Wyo., I’m Peter O’Dowd for Marketplace.
6 comments
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I have just been reading some of the comments about ethanol usage in small engines in the latest (jan/feb) issue of PET that came today, and just had to put in my 2 cents worth. I am no big fan of reformulated fuels, regardless of the method used, but here in Ne. we have had it (ethanol) available for a LOT of years now. It is usually cheaper, so since the price of fuel got really out of hand in the last couple years, there has been more and more usage. I run a small lawn mower shop, and most of my customers have older equipment, as I don’t sell whole goods anymore since I have semi-retired. I personally see VERY few problems that I can point to as definitively being caused by E-10. On a personal level, I have been using it in my own mower, which was new in 1972, and have not had any troubles. I also use it in my 1978 and my 1980 pickups, and my 1965 Mustang. None of which are high performance vehicles. I also used it years ago when it first came out in old cars, the kind people said would plug up fuel filters if you used ethanol, without EVER having a problem. I wonder if some of the people having a problem are getting a lot more than 10% ethanol. When it first started here, I started testing the percent of alcohol in peoples fuel and sometimes it was as high as 20%. Also just as a side note, one guy said, and I quote, Well, ya’ll might as well get used to the idea of methanol, thank you Californi-eh. If he has methanol in his gas I sure do think he will have problems. Oh by the way I have been repairing small engines for OVER 40 years now, so I do have a little experience, in case anyone was wondering. LOL
I believe that the negative comments are directly related to big oil and their resistance to ethanol. Personally, I have used ethanol since the mid 70′s in everything that I own. A Poulan chain saw purchased in 78…no problems (and I AM still using it yet today!). In all my vehicles…no problems with ethanol related. In all my lawn equipment…no problems. Many of the problems have been simply an easy thing to blame when it fact the problem had nothing to do with ethanol. On another note, many of the alcohol issues were from when we used methanol. Ethanol is totally different and does not have the negative attributes that methanol has. Be sure to differentiate the two when talking about alcohol additives. Another benefit to ethanol is that you do not need to add ‘heat’ to your gasoline in the winter time to prevent gas line freeze up!
I find the article (Inconclusive) very interesting, I live on Long Island in the New York area, we have had this cursed ethanol gas for years now, and when it started one thing was obvious gas milage was cut in half, or in other words what once required a gallon now needed two, and this was reported at the time in the Wall Street Journal. What improvement to the inviorment could possibly be accomplished if the consumer has to burn twice as much petrolium to achive the effect, the answer is negative, this obviously is not to benifit the inviorment. I must wonder why this undeniable fact never comes up in these government studies =INCONCLUSIVE!
Regarding the guy who says that gas mileage drops 50%with ethanol use—do you mean my car that gets over 20 mpg burning E-10 would suddenly get over 40 mpg if I switched to regular gas??? I wish, but I don’t think so ! Even the E-85 flex fuel vehicles don’t get that much of a reduction in mileage. I agree that there is some reduction in mileage, but in the case of E- 10 it is not enough that I have noticed it, and I keep quite good records of gas mileage. Just as a side note, when I was using straight methanol in my garden tractor pulling tractor, it did take double size jets, requiring twice the fuel, but sure ran cool.
I have a John Deere tractor mower. It is over 12 years old. I have had it serviced and taken very good care of it in order to keep it for as long as I can as I’m a widow who will probably only be able to keep doing the mowing for another year or two. It ran well and worked fine until last summer. A mechanic who worked for our farm told me it was the ethanol that was now in the gas at the co-op that was causing the problem. None of the other mechanics in town or the John Deere dealership mentioned this when I talked to them. I drained the gas tank and started using non-ethanol gas, and it worked fine again. I started having trouble again this summer. This time when I went to fill up a gas can, the place I used to get non-ethanol gas now said it contained ethanol. I was told there is no place in my state to buy non-ethanol gas. This is ruining my engine, my fuel lines, and gunking up the carburetor. I can only mow for 20 minutes then have to stop and let it cool off. Now I’ll use additive, but I’m pretty upset that nobody told me how to prevent problems, and it is costing me money and time. At the same time, the local investors in the new ethanol plant down the road said they made so much money it ought to be illegal. Maybe I’ll go ask one of them to buy me a new mower.
Not good on so many fronts.
We need to be drilling for oil in the U.S.