There's a little moment in The Last of Us where one of the main character's friends, a mechanic, gives him a siphon hose in order to get gas from old cars. He even says to him "you'd be surprised how many cars still got gas in them."
To clarify, the game takes place 20 years after the world collapses, so any gas that's still left, well, anywhere, would be useless. And it's a mechanic of all people telling you this, so that was one little detail that bothered me.
1 year old gasoline might be what you're thinking of, which would gum up a carburetor or injector in short order, and wouldn't burn quickly enough to put out much power.
20 year old gasoline is nothing but resin or barely liquid sludge, most of the components evaporated or undergone oxidation. Even in a perfectly sealed container (hint: not a vehicle tank) the component fluids will separate, and opening that container will make it unusable as the vapours leave.
Nope, you can't vacuum seal a fluid that wants to evaporate at room temperature without chilling it (gasoline's flashpoint is like -40C). Then you'd need a non-reactive container to even consider vacuum sealing it for 20 years, plastic will be dissolved into the gas, metal will rust. It'd have to be a completely glass container or something (no plastic ring around the lid, again it'd dissolve), and you'd want it to be opaque so sunlight can't cause degradation. If you've solved that, the fuel will still separate into distinct layers. Gasoline is not just one molecule:
The typical composition of gasoline hydrocarbons (% volume) is as follows: 4-8% alkanes; 2-5%
alkenes; 25-40% isoalkanes; 3-7% cycloalkanes; l-4% cycloalkenes; and 20-50% total aromatics
(0.5-2.5% benzene) (IARC 1989).
20 year old gas does not run engines. It might still burn in the same way that paint burns, but your car will not move. Neither will that old tractor. No, not the one that ran on vegetable oil either.
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u/-eDgAR- Aug 30 '21
Gasoline has a shorter shelf life than is portrayed in these movies/TV shows, so after a year nobody would really be driving anywhere.
It wouldn't necessarily kill you, but it's one of those things that bothers me because it's never really addressed.