Gas-Saving Tips

A friend learned the following from a petroleum engineer:

My line of work is in petroleum pipeline for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks to get more of your money's worth for every liter.

Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their Storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense
is the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening, your 1-liter is not exactly 1-liter. In petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products play an important role.

Here in Kinder Morgan pipeline where I work in San Jose, CA we delivered about 4 million gallons in 24-hours period thru the pipe line, one day it's diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium grade. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of 16,800,000 gallons. So you see a 1-degree rise in temps is a big deal for the business, but the service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pump.

Also one more reminder, if there is a gasoline truck bringing loads at the time when you have to buy gas do not fill up, most likely the gasoline has been stirred up when the gas is delivered, and you might get some of the dirt that settled at the bottom.

When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look up you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: lo, mid, and hi, with slow mode you should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that were created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump are sort of corrugated, that one is a return line for vapor's recovery for the gas that has already been metered.

If you are pumping on fast rates, some of the liquid that goes to your tank become vapors, those vapors were being sucked up back to the underground tank so that you're getting less worth of your money.

One of the most important tip is to fill up when your gas tank is half full or half empty. The reason for this is, the more gas you have in your tank the less air occupying it's empty space, remember gasoline evaporates faster than you think.

You see all gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof, this roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike the service station, here where I work every truck load that we load is temperature compensated so that gallons or liter is actually the exact amount.

Interesting and with gas at relatively high prices these days, it is probably worth experimenting.

9 July 2007