I heard some interesting and fun E15-related stories recently, about what the fuel has done for a South Dakota station owner as well as some on-track testing of what happens when water and E15 meet.

Sometimes, as a reporter, you find bits and pieces of a story that are interesting but for one reason or another, they don’t make it into your story. It might be about flow, and fitting the various puzzle pieces of a story together. Some parts just don’t fit. Or, it might simply be about story length. Stories have to end somewhere.

Last week, I listened in on a briefing held by the Fuels America coalition in Washington, D.C. Two elements of this event caught my attention but didn’t make it into my main story. So I squirreled my notes away so I could use them in a later blog.

Bruce Vollan, owner of Vollan Oil in Baltic, S.D., is someone I’ve heard of before, more than once. In fact, I was planning to interview him for this blog at some point in the future. Frankly, he has a fascinating success story that the E15 critics will hate to hear. Therefore, it is my pleasure to help tell it.

As he describes it, back in 2007 Vollan decided to take a leap and spend $18,000 to install blender pumps at their small-town gasoline station. This despite the fact that the business was barely scraping by, supporting only Vollan, his parents and one part-time employee. Plus, conventional gas pumps only cost $12,000 to $14,000, he said.

But customers had been asking for higher ethanol blends, so they borrowed money and did it. Business, which had been static, immediately increased twofold. Vollan was so pleased with how well higher ethanol blends were selling that he impatiently waited for the day he could sell E15. Although it was a painful, long process to get the E15 waiver approved, by June of 2012 he got his pumps labeled and completed other necessary steps to offer E15. “Within weeks, our E15 became our No. 2 seller,” he said, adding that sales have remained solid in the months since.

In the last year, on a per gallon basis, ethanol has made up 18 to 28 percent of Vollan Oil’s total sales in a month. Take that, 10 percent blend wall. “The least amount of ethanol I have sold in a gallon of gas is 18 percent,” he said. “It kind of speaks for itself.” Vollan calculated that his blend wall is 22 to 24 percent on average.

And it’s not like the gas station only offers ethanol blends either. He sells straight gas right alongside E10, E15, E30 and E85. “Given that choice, it’s so obvious that the consumer wants to buy ethanol,’’ he said.

Today, the gas station’s yearly volume has increased threefold, to nearly a million gallons. Oh, and speaking of jobs? The station now has 12 people on payroll. “It really helped put us on the map, it helped us to become, profitable, sustainable,” he said, recalling the days before the blender pumps went in, when he didn’t know if the business would stay afloat.

The other story that really caught my attention came from Andy Randolph, engine technical director from Richard Childress Racing. It’s a racing company that also builds engines for a variety of racing series, including NASCAR. He recalled when NASCAR switched to E15 two and a half years ago. “The first thing that we really liked about E15 was, because of the ethanol content and the high octane, the aromatic concentration of the fuel was cut in half and we really liked that from a safety standpoint,” he said, adding that aromatics may be high octane but they are also carcinogenic.

News of the switch was met with loud protests from critics, predicting the many problems ethanol would cause—including vehicle part corrosion, engine failure and water contamination. The sky was going to fall and expensive race cars were going to become hunks of junk, basically. As it turned out, none of it came true. Specifically, on the water contamination side, Randolph talked about a bench experiment the group conducted to show it wasn’t the issue the critics claimed it was.

First, they added 9 cubic centimeters (CCs) of water to 1,200 CCs of E15. The water quickly went to the bottom of the beaker. With vigorous mixing, however, it was absorbed in the fuel, a result he called “pretty neat.” (By adding more water, they discovered that the fuel does get to a point of saturation eventually, when the water will no longer mix.) Adding the same amount of water to the same amount of gasoline, however, had a much different result. As he put it, at the 9 CCs water level a person could stir until they are blue in the face but it won’t combine with the gasoline. The water continues to separate, going to the bottom of the beaker when the stirring stops. Basically, what this experiment and NASCAR’s continued successful use of E15 has shown Randolph is, water contamination of ethanol (and the other problems critics shouted about in the beginning) aren’t really a problem. “It’s really proven to be a non-issue,” he said.

So, let me get this straight. The petroleum industry claims that consumers don’t want E15 offered at retail stations, correct? But business is booming in South Dakota where a small town independent gas station owner took a chance on ethanol. If E15 is used, the critics claim it’s going to cause all sorts of engine troubles, right? But NASCAR race cars have run millions of miles on E15 and everything is going great. Now that’s worth talking about.