Ari G

iTrader: (25)

Is is safe to use Toluene as octane booster or drive on it and n-heptane in daily driving?

Is anyone here using it as an Octane booster?

Dosen´t it damage(dry up) rubber?or other materials

J-Rod

Are you getting knock retard? Only use octane boosters if your car is detonanting. Increasing octane needlessly only hurts power production.

But, Toluene is fine just don't go over about 20% concentration as it gets hard to burn, and you have to pre-heat the fuel.

Lots of boosted guys like it.

gnx7

iTrader: (28)

Toulene and Xylene are octane boosters which shouldn't be used in a concentration greater than 30% or you will get cold start driveability issues.

Toulene is 114 octane
Xylene is 117 octane

You can buy a 5 gallon drum from you local paint supply shop for around $30-40.

7 gallons of 92 octane
3 gallons of Xylene
3 ounces (Marvel Mystery Oil) for lubrication
yields 100 octane

Unless you are running higher compression or are boosted you probably are wasting your $$$.

When you buy those 16oz octane boosters they really only boost it from 91 to 91.3 or 91.4 octane as you need a larger concentration to effectively change the ratio.

pekkaz

Toluene is great for identifying false knock

andereck

Do you mean by raising your octane substantially with toulene you can see if the knock goes away temporarily on the scan tool/logger?

pekkaz

Yes

andereck

Damn fine idea.

Ari G

iTrader: (25)

No i´m n/A and thinking about using 89 fuel and adding Toluene to make it 93octane becuse i´m seening knock

andereck

Wouldn't it be cheaper to just spend the $.10 gal more for 91/92?

J-Rod

Yes, it probably would be. Take $5.00 gallons for Toulune, and divide it by 18 gallons of gas. You're raising the cost of your gas by $.27 gallon. Its cheaper to buy premium. Use Tolune if you need more than 93....

Steve Gunn

Might be a coincidence, but I had to replace my cats some years ago shortly after running a few tanks of Toluene mix.

Toxic Texan

Not for me I have both. Xylene is a feed to the unit I work at and we use 99.98% toluene on the other unit. Too bad I like my job.

87gnx

iTrader: (3)

Nope, Toluene will ruin your cats(unless you don't have any).
If used, don't get it on yourself, its capillary absorbed and goes right to your liver and kidneys(unless you don't have any).

mistermike

Marathon premium fuel (one of the few oil companies to publish MSDS) contains 1 to 15 percent toluene and 2 to 10 percent xylene already.
http://www.marathonpetroleum.com/msds/0126MAR019.pdf

Toxic Texan

Amoco fuels do also. PPM It takes a 10,000ppm to be 1 precent.

http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/concentration.html

J-Rod

Toluene would only ruin your cats if you ran the car too rich, and melted the cats. There are no byproducts in Tolune that would affect a catalytic converter otherwise. Its not like TEL, or MMT which compromises the effectiveness of the cat.

As for its danger, you see the same sort of danger with plenty of other solvents, and of course you see the same sort of danger by geting gas on you. It has Tolune, Xylene, Benzene, etc... in it.

87gnx

iTrader: (3)

Read the M.S.D.S.(material safety data sheet) on it some time.
As far as the dangers of getting Gas on you vapors are harmless unless inhaled, the miniscule amount of additives in gasoline aren't NEARLY as bad as the straight chemicals you listed above..$.02.

J-Rod

Miniscule ammounts of what?

Gasoline is a blend of these "miniscule" additives. I haven't looked at a recent blend sheet, Toxic could obviously comment on what the specific makeup is these days.

The older stuff I have lists “Fuel A - Unleaded EPA Reference Fuel”
Fuel A contained 30.1% aromatics, 8.2% olefins, and 61.7% saturates.

Fuel A was further described as containing
0.2% benzene,
16.7% toluene,
1.0% n-butane,
5.4% isopentane,
and 4.8% n-pentane.


Typically, gasoline contains more than 150 chemicals including varying amounts of benzene,toluene, xylene, ethylbenzene, 1,2-dibromoethane, 1,3-butadiene, etc...

How the gasoline is made determines which chemicals are present in the gasoline mixture and how much of each is present. The actual composition varies with the source of the crude petroleum, the manufacturer, and the time of year.

Even if you were to add 15% Toluene to most grades of fuel, it would still conform to ASTM D4814 which specifies which specify an aromatic content of between 20% and 45%.

Now, if current specs (and I don't have a current blend sheet) were to have content more than the old reference fuel then you'd be out of ASTM spec, but that still is in conformance with many of the fuel standards outside the United States, and IMHO would be more than safe to run.

Keep in mind Toluene is simply an aromatic hydrocarbon.

87gnx

iTrader: (3)

Miniscule amounts(10000 ppm to equal 1 percent). The original post asks about Toluene as an OCTANE BOOSTER.Who cares HOW MUCH is in gasoline already??. Toluene is also used as a cleaner, in its straight form.
Sorry; I didn't know I was posting after a Petroleum Engineer(Chemical Engineer).
Complete your research next time before you post.

J-Rod

You made several incorrect statements which I attempted to clear up.

The toxicity issues of Toluene are normally grossly overstated by many folks. I.E. "Don't get it on you or it will kill you !!!". They read the warnings, and fail to notice the same warning apply for many cleaners and solvents, along with gasoline itself.

Toluene is treated like the boogeyman, when in fact its already a major component in fuel to begin with. So, my point is, if its already 15-20% of your fuel content getting it on your skin is very similar to geting gas on yourself.

As for destroying a cat, the only way it would do so is to go rich, and melt it. The ingredients in Toluene themselves won't hurt a cat.

As for boosting octane I see no issue with it, so long as its done in the prescibed manner as has been outlined for some time now, and not exceeding a 20% concentration.