Physiochemical Property Characterization of Hydrous and Anhydrous Ethanol Blended Gasoline

Water removal during the production of bioethanol is highly energy intensive. At the azeotropic point, the mixture can no longer be separated via fractional distillation, so expensive and energy intensive methods are required for further purification. Hence, there is an interest in using hydrous ethanol at the azeotropic point to improve the energy balance of ethanol fuel production. Currently there is a lack of available thermophysical property data for hydrous ethanol gasoline fuel blends. These data are important to understand the effect of water on critical fuel properties and to evaluate the potential of using hydrous ethanol fuels in conventional and optimized spark ignition engines. In this study, gasoline was blended with 10, 15, and 30 vol % of anhydrous and hydrous ethanol. The distillation curve, Reid vapor pressure, vapor lock protection potential, viscosity, density, haze and phase separation points, and lower heating value were measured for each blend, and the results were compared to ASTM D4814, the standard specification for automotive spark ignition engine fuels. The majority of the properties measured for the low- and midlevel hydrous ethanol blends are not significantly different from those of the corresponding anhydrous ethanol blends. The only differences observed between the hydrous and anhydrous fuels were in their viscosity and phase separation. The viscosity increased as the total water content increased, whereas the phase separation temperatures decreased with an increasing hydrous ethanol fraction. The results of this study suggest that hydrous ethanol blends may have the potential to be used in current internal combustion engines as a drop-in fuel and in future engine designs tuned to operate on fuels with high levels of ethanol.