In the summer months Minnesota requires all diesel fuel to be 20% bio. Now I order my fuel after October 1 and before May 1 so I can get the 5% bio diesel. But you have to check because many will still sell a blend of more than 5% in the winter and more than 20% in summer. Filled up my semi truck last winter and as soon as it got around zero it gelled up even though I had treated it. That was fun. My old supplier sometimes sold 40% and it ruined two injector pumps for me. Since Minnesota mandated biodiesel all my steel diesel tanks on my equipment have rust in them to some degree. Something that I never saw before biodiesel.

I'd prefer 0% bio but in Minnesota, the communist state that it is, pure diesel fuel is against the law.

Interesting to see the comments from BioD users. I was not aware of the storage or user problems with BioD. The problems with ethanol are well known.

What I have always found more interesting is how the two of them are made. Ethanol is made in plants via the fermentation of corn.....essentially large moonshine stills. Same exact process. The only thing they do different is to contaminate it with regular gasoline when it leaves the plant, so as to prevent somebody from hijacking a tanker truck and selling it as moonshine. Ethanol plants are regulated by ATF. BTU value of ethanol is about 70% or so of regular gasoline. So as a fuel to put in a standard gasoline engine it kinda sucks, and that is before the problems with water and corrosion start showing up. Worse, when they first started, they used more BTW's of energy to make the stuff than they got out of it in ethanol. Would have made more sense to burn the propane and/or natural gas it took to make the stuff instead. But it does take a lot of corn out of storage. Corn price (value of ethanol) now being tied pretty close to the btu value of unleaded gasoline at the pump.

BioD on the other hand, is a straight forward chemical process. Made by mixing some type of oil (from vegetable oil or animal fat) with lye and methanol. No heat or other processes other than separation and cleanup needed. You can actually make BioD in your kitchen in a two liter soda bottle. Takes just a few seconds to see the process unfold. Outcome is 90% BioD and 10% glycerin. BTU value of BioD being closer to 90% that of regular #2 diesel and has the same lubricating properties as diesel with sulfur. It is also a solvent, so using it tends to cleanup the fuel systems. Back when it first started, there were a lot of complaints about how it gunked things up. It will also gel at a higher temp than diesel, which screws things up in cold weather. Most diesel engines will run on 100% BioD with no modifications. Not so with E80 or higher.

What has also hampered BioD is there is no vast surplus of oil crops (like soybeans) like there is for corn. Most of it was already spoken for in the food industry. McDonalds doesn't care what oil for their french fries costs. You can't pay more soy oil than it's BTU value at the pump is worth, or you will go broke. A lot of the early BioD plants ignored this and went bankrupt as a result.

So BioD always seemed to me to be the better of the two. But both have their flaws in comparison to the oil based fuels.

But if you ever run out of the oil based fuels, which mankind will at some point, at least you have an option for a renewable liquid fuel you can dump in the tank so you don't have to go back to farming with horses.

There are STC's (Standard Type Certificate) available for many piston aircraft.  No ethanol is allowed.  The ROTAX 912 engine in a Flight Design CTSW requires premium unleaded no ethanol gasoline.

I can tell a difference in my D-17 when 10% ethanol is used.  Actually burns more gallons per hour than pure gasoline.

Ethanol may help the grain industry but it does nothing to help our engines.  

As for bio-diesel......keep it.  Not for my engines.  I work too hard to make a living and can not afford to put crap in my fuel tanks.

My two chin saws do not know what pure gasoline is.  They always run great.  The E 10 sits in the lawn mower and lawn tractor tanks all winter with additive.  twenty some years with the tractor and 19 with the Z turn.  nary a problem with the gas.

I am not  proponent of E 10, but normally don't blame all my problems on E 10. 

A side benefit of the sulfur was as a micro nutrient to the soil.  

Sulfur has also been scrubbed from coal fired plants.

Sulfur, in large enough quantities, can cause acid rain. This is bad for marble.

We now have to add sulfur to our fields.

Same here.

There is no "pure gas" or "no-ethanol" option where I live and has not been in the 20+ years I have lived here.

I've wore the crankshaft out on a push mower after 16 years- original carb still worked.

I've got a John Deere 325 lawn tractor that's been mowing grass since 1997.  No fuel-related issues.

I've got a Troy-Bilt Horse tiller with a Tecumseh HH60 built in 1976.  No problems.

15 year old chain saw- no issues.

In my AC-B, I use standard 87 octane with an ethanol treatment.  So far, so good.

However, I buy the gas and use the gas.  No gas sits more than a month.  At the end of the season, everything gets run dry.  I understand that this is easier in a homeowner situation as I'm not buying in bulk, but my entire experience with E-10 is that when bought and used, it causes no issues.  Sitting around?  Oh yeah, problems.  At the beginning of this summer, I tore into an old Wards tractor as a project for my son.  It had been in a barn for over 10 years.  The fuel bowl was the worse I had ever seen.  The brass float had pinhole leaks all around it at the exact level where the fuel sat for so long....and the smell....

I mix it out of my larger fuel cans which all have 87.  No problems.

All of our gas here has ethanol, not just 87.  We are in one of 2 counties in Indiana subject to the EPA's Reformulated Gasoline Program meaning that our gas is "special" gas.  In addition to other requirements, it has to be "oxygenated" which around here is normally accomplished with ethanol. 

No.  It's not just Indiana.  Many places across the country are under the same EPA regulations due to high ozone levels.  Where I live, Porter County, Indiana, we are less than 50 miles from Chicago and have steel mills dotting the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  While I live in a nice and thoroughly rural location, what goes on at the shoreline and in Chicago places the whole county under these regulations.

In addition to being forced to sell "reformulated" gasoline, many places sell E-10 voluntarily rather than stock a mixture of gasoline types.  I want to be clear- E-10 and reformulated are not necessarily the same thing.  The E-10 gas can be "reformulated" or not, but most of the reformulated gas is E-10 because it has to be oxygenated.  The other compound used to oxygenate gasoline is MTBE which is a carcinogen and has been banned in some places and is being phased out others.

 In any event, generally, only 2 types of gas are delivered to any gas station to make 3 grades.  87 and 93 (or 91-92).  The pumps then mix the 2 to make midgrade.  That mean, obviously, even if the "high test" has no ethanol, whatever proportion of the mix is from the 87 brings its ethanol (if any) along to the midgrade.  I would note that one station near me sells E-10, E-20 and E-85.  The E-20 was a new one on me but is apparently intended for vehicles made after 2001 and flex-fuel vehicles.  I have never used it.

Like I said, though, there is really no non-ethanol choice in most places under the reformulated gas mandate.  I guess I could try marinas or airports....but I'm not going to.  In fact, there are no marinas that sell "pure gas" in my area either.

Here is a list of the areas where the reformulated gas mandate is in effect:

https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline" rel="nofollow - https://www.epa.gov/gasoline-standards/reformulated-gasoline

Mostly, it's urban locations, but as in my case, one part of the county or area may pull the rest of it in.