E15 Fuel - More ETHANOL, More RISK? #automobile #mechanic #ethanol #e15

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]The EPA is allowing more ethanol to be blended into your fuel. Hi, I'm Lake, the motor oil geek. Let's explain why this is happening. Well, this isn't actually new. Every summer since co, the EPA has been granting temporary waiverss that allow for a higher read vapor pressure. You see, when you put more ethanol into the fuel, the vapor pressure increases. So during the summer when more people are driving there's more demand for fuel we have a problem not only here in the US but really around the world ever since co refining capacity has dropped but that summer increase in demand means we need to make more fuel how do we do it well ever since co what we've been doing is putting more ethanol into the fuel in the summertime these waiverss that allow for a higher vapor pressure allow more ethanol to be blended into the fuel and that results in two things that increase fuel supply during the summer months.

[00:01:07]Number one, it's just more ethanol displacing gasoline. But number two, and this is where it gets really interesting, ethanol has a higher octane value than regular gasoline. In fact, regular 87 gasoline is actually 83 octane gasoline. When you add the 10% ethanol, it bumps it up to 87. So when you go more than 10% ethanol in the fuel, it allows the octane to go lower than 83. And when octane goes down, yield goes up. That's right. refineries can make more of a lower octane gasoline from the same amount of crude oil going in. So, by increasing that vapor pressure limit and allowing more ethanol to be blended into the fuel, we can make more fuel. And again, this isn't actually new. It's actually been going on every summer since 2022. But for you as the viewer and consumer, just know two things. one, your fuel economy is going to go down with a higher ethanol blend. And if you happen to have small engines, boats, and things like that, that higher ethanol content isn't your friend. We've covered this in actually two previous videos. I'll leave a link for both of those in the description box below.