Marine engines require special precautions to prevent water contamination from alcohol fuels. Active fuel management is now required to protect marine engines from adverse effects of alcohol and to prevent water from entering fuel system.
Precautions:
- The most effective precautions you can take with alcohol blend fuels (E10 and E85) is to make sure you only run your engine on clean, new, fresh fuel, if non-alcohol fuel is not available in your area.
We recommend re-filling fuel tank every 1-3 weeks, when using ethanol blend fuels, to avoid excess water absorption.
In 100 days or less, under ideal conditions (low humidity, sealed fuel system) the alcohol composition of gasoline will absorb enough water to cause gas contamination. In reality, marine engines will experience contaminated fuel much sooner.
When E10 fuel experiences water conatamination octane will decrease up to 3 points, sometimes referred to as "lean fuel".
- Maintain a sealed fuel tank, and avoid gas tank and fuel lines from unnecessarily coming in contact with water. More Info.
I found a good article on how to burn alcohol fuels without problems at:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.marineenginedigest.com/specialreports/water_in_the_fuel.htm