How can a marina prepare for the change from MTBE to ethanol as the fuel oxygenate?
Check with the manufacturer to make certain the tank and lines won’t experience problems with ethanol. Inspect the tank for water and, if present, pump out all water and thoroughly clean the tank. Install ethanol-compatible filters. The tank should be less than 20 percent full before adding the first load of fuel with ethanol. This will help avoid difficulties of dealing with and selling fuel that is a mixture of two different fuel blends to a boater who may have a third blend in the tank. And the marina is dealing with larger stationary tanks that will not allow the two different blends to mix very easily. Ethanol and MTBE should be compatible with each other chemically, but different amounts are used for oxygenation and octane adjustment purposes, and having a tank with two different chemical compounds floating around trying to redistribute could produce unpredictable results. With a tank containing less than 20 percent fuel to begin with, there will be less potential for stratificat
