How scary is gasohol?

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 14:23:29 -0600, Russell Kent
wrote:
snip
OK, the long answer would require a significant amount of college-level
chemistry. The short answer is ethanol (grain alcohol, the alcohol that is used
as an oxygenate in gasoline) would prefer to be mixed with water rather than
gasoline. So if you take a known quantity of water and agitate it with a
comparable amount of gasoline containing some alcohol, then when the churning
stops some portion of the alcohol that was in solution with the gasoline is now
in solution with the water. Since the water-gasoline boundary is easily seen,
and since the addition of the alcohol to the water makes the water+alcohol
solution have more volume, then the if the water-gasoline boundary moves up
(more water volume), there is alcohol in the gasoline.
snip

So what happens if you fill your wings partway with auto gas, add a
bunch of water with a lot of splashing, wait a few minutes and then
drain the sumps until no more water comes out? Can you extract the
ethanol from the gas that way? (What about the octane number? Well,
suppose you only need 80/87 like Jay. What if you start with
premium?)

Note: This is a gedanken experiment only. Do not try this at home.

Don