TEMPLE, Texas – Gas stations in Temple, Texas, now offer customers a 10 percent ethanol blend, the Temple Daily Telegram reports. Local gas stations have been updating filters, checking tanks and applying green ethanol-blend stickers to put on pumps, but such a change is not without its cost and problems for retailers.
Because ethanol’s high water content can clog fuel filters at the pump and in cars, gas station operators have to upgrade equipment to stock ethanol fuel blends. For example, co-owner Jared Westmoreland of Texans Texaco had to pay more than $500 to ensure the blend would be dispensed with no problems.
“There’s a pump system that literally sucks the contaminated water out of the bottom of the tank. Even an inch can cause problems,” he said. “We’re going to have to replace filters probably for the next few weeks. Every time somebody’s fueling up here, we’ve got to keep an eye on how fast the fuel is going, if it starts to tick in penny increments we’ve got a problem.”
The 2005 and 2007 federal energy acts require refineries to make cleaner-burning ethanol. “Because ethanol is the only biofuel source with sufficient production and base feed stock to meet these mandates, it has been the most widely used by refiners to meet the new federal mandates,” said Chris Martin, spokesman for the Texas Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association.
Because renewable fuels will be required to increase every year between now and 2022, retailers will continually have to purchase new pumps and refineries will need to reconfigure how they deliver the fuel.
“There’s a train wreck ahead. It (ethanol) can’t go through the pipelines like a traditional fuel because it attracts water molecules,” said Jeff Lenard, NACS spokesman. “So while you have 100 different motor fuel products that are transported via pipelines (diesel, jet fuel, crude oil, refined products) ethanol has to be either barged, trucked or transported via rail, so it creates some distribution challenges as well.”