Blending issues

[tillyfromparadise Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close tillyfromparadise]

Re: Blending issues

Hi BP,

Around here when i was WVOing Alpine grade dino used to be made with 40% by volume heating oil which in turn is 50% Kerosene... ie at least 20% Kerosene. I don't know what they do now.

The fellow I was talking to today said that Alpine diesel is a mixture of kerosene and #2 diesel although he was not aware of the percentages.

Yes this occurs best when you take summer grade diesel into alpine areas....
In some cold areas in Australia in every farm diesel fuel tank there floats globules of wax,... No doubt the root cause is that the summer diesel is not emptied out before the autumn order goes in, if it is ordered at all.
BP

Yes, I too have read that there is no one formula for #2 diesel. During the summer it is produced with more wax content because the weather is warmer and the wax will remain liquid.
During the winter it is produced with less wax content and consequently starts to wax at a lower temperature.
This also depends on what part of the country you live in and how cold it is likely to get.
So the best idea is to buy your diesel fuel from a service station that has high turn over so you are always getting the correct fuel for the time of the year at that location.

[bushpig Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bushpig]

Re: Blending issues

In the merc 300D I dealt with it by having an extra truck fuel filter in a handy place before the "real one" and a tray of spare cheap truck filter elements. In the initial stages due to clogging I had to change this out regularly on the side of the road, once even at 50 KMs, after 4 months I forgot all about it and neglected the filters, so clean was my system by then.

I have found my old post on the subject at infopop. http://www.biodieseldiscussion.com/f...ghlight=GREASY this will show you what I suggest whathe
It was the primary filter I had to keep changing out on the merc. It was the truck filter elements in the Nissan.
After I realised I couldn't run blends legally I got some heating elements off Dana for the injector lines and injector heaters off somewhere else. The Greasy Pig did hundreds of thousands of kilometres, over half of them on SVO... I stopped vege-ing and went back to dino at some stage. The Greasy Pig still lives but is out of rego dusty in the shed. I plan to give it away for parts to another merc 300D owner.
Herewith another thread on the subject. http://www.biodieseldiscussion.com/f...ad.php?t=20314

[bushpig Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bushpig]

Re: Blending issues

I don't have time to to find the thread on ethanol inclusion in a blend so herewith a quick "soldier's 5" (five minute lesson) on it.

I came up with the idea from the following facts. (I was not the first as it turned out http://www.biodieseldiscussion.com/f...ad.php?t=20314 but at least I got there before Kugel, the father of blending on the infopop forum in younger days. I love Kugel.)

1. It would be nice not to have to de-water oil and just have something that would "mop it up" and hold it in solution so that all you got was a bit of extra power. If water is in solution it is invisible and harmless to the injector pump for all intents and purposes. Free power less processing.
2. Some mechanics/truck operators advocated putting a litre of metho with a tank of fuel now and again as a biocide. I assume that the bugs only live in diesel because they can get to water somewhere in the tank; Metho would go to where the water is and kill the bugs.
3. Injection of water into diesel engines is readily done (for example in large diesel powered ships using bunker oil) to increase power by way of modifying the flame front characteristics also having the effect of steam cleaning the bore and piston at every stroke cycle. In Europe molecular water bound into fuels was thought of and advocated for that reason. Water injection kits can be bought for diesels for improvement in power and economy. You can even mist it in the air intake.
4. The bush test for ethanol in petrol was to add water to a sample. If there was ethanol in the petrol it will be pulled out by the water (having a polar end in solvent terms) having more affinity for the water than the petrol and will form peculiar ovoid shaped drops on the bottom. Never having seen them before you will recognise them straight away, so peculiar are they, like short slugs moving slowly around the bottom of the container. Yes I have seen them once but when I didn't expect to, alarmed me as I remember but I don't recall why... would have been a blend issue.
5. BioD and WVO are more hydrophylic (water loving) than dino. In filters with a clear visable water trap the exact same machines (Nissan Patrols) will show water visible in the trap on the dino but nil nix nothing in the trap on Biod & WVO. The now Senator (no joke seriously a commonwealth senator) and I just looked at each other and shook our heads at that... closed the bonnets. He said that he always had water in the trap.... I was aghast at that.

Potential concerns:
6. The ethanol we use is called methylated Spirits and already comes with 5% water and we are putting this through our injector pumps. Eeeek..
7. It is something that you wouldn't feel comfortable doing unless you had a water trap type filter. On the Greasy Pig I had 2. Nissan only 1.

I used this blend and others until the discovery of the legal situation on blends. I still could have blended avoiding the legislation accepting a benzene ring pollution cost but went to SVO.
The vehicles where without any injector issues, those vehicles still run today on dino.