Video Spotlight: What Actually Happens to Fuel When Phase Separation Occurs?

Phase separation can be a challenging chemistry lesson for fuel site operators to wrap their heads around. Nevertheless, if you’re distributing fuel with ethanol in it, it’s crucial to understand what happens to ethanol when it mixes with water.

Fuel that experienced phase separation will damage vehicle engines. As such, operators need to appreciate how easily phase separation can occur and adopt measures to prevent this bad fuel from being pumped into vehicles.

To help educate operators about phase separation, PetroClear conducted a lab demonstration to simulate what happens to an ethanol blend inside the storage tank when water is introduced. Watch this video to see the results.