Students test Gallup gas
Experiment determines water content

Chris Saucedo, right, and Josh Halona fill vials with gasoline Thursday at Central High School in Gallup as they prepare test samples for an experiment to see how much water is in the gasoline that they purchased from area service stations. [Photo by Jeffery Jones/Independent

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

Latisha Bowman smells a container of gasoline held by her lab partner, Perlita Arteaga during a science experiment Thursday at Central High School in Gallup. [Photo by Jeffery Jones/Independent]

GALLUP — Chris Saucedo has a 1987 Chevy which he admits is a gas hog.

So, while doing a discussion on energy usage in his class at Central High School, Saucedo convinced his teacher, John Spaulding, to make it a class project to do some experiments to determine which gasolines sold in town provided best gas mileage.

It took several days, with classmates going around to gas stations along and near U.S. Highway 66 to get gasoline to use for testing purposes.

A couple of stations refused to sell them gasoline, Saucedo said, mainly because they were only asking to buy 10 cents worth. But 12 stations did allow the sales, which gave Saucedo and his other classmates enough to do several tests.

"The object of the tests," said Saucedo, "was to determine the water content of the gasoline we bought."

The idea was that the more water in the sample, the less gasoline and therefore less miles per gallon.

Having water in the tank could be an indication, he said, that the tank at the station was allowing water to seep in. "We also wanted to determine if any gas stations were ripping us off," he said.

After two days of tests, there were two clear winners, he said. The gas samples from Nechero's Shell and Nechero's Chevron test better than any of the other samples.

The other stations tested included Thriftway, Eagle, Allsup, Mustang, Gas & Save, Gas-Up, Texaco, Conoco and Luv's Truck Stop.

The class did a calorie test the higher the calorie the more fuel in the product. It also did a centrifuge test, to separate gasoline from water and a test using methylene blue, which, as it names implies, turns any water or alcohol in the product blue while leaving the gasoline clear.

The calorie tests showed stations receiving scores of anyway from 73 to 345, but Spaulding said at the level of the testing done by the students, the results were probably not the most accurate.

"There is a high variance," he said. "the scores could be 100 points off."

But Saucedo was satisfied with his results, saying that there was no doubt in his mind which gasoline stations he would be using in the future, even though the prices at Nechero's stations are higher than at some of the other stations that were tested.

"You get what you pay for," said Bill Nechero, who, with his brother Frank, operates the two top stations in the student's testing.

While some of the non-brands sell for 10 to 15 cents a gallon less, none have the additives that the major brands put in their gasolines and these additives makes the fuel burn faster and more efficiently, providing more miles to the gallon.

"With additives, you get better mileage and cleaner engines," he said.