WHAT IS BAD FUEL AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Fuel quality is crucial for fleets, trucks, and heavy equipment. From damaged engines to increased sulfur emissions, dirty fuel can affect business operations in numerous negative ways. To prevent these expensive problems, it’s important to maintain fuel quality .
DIRTY FUEL IS BAD
All fuel becomes contaminated over time, sometimes even before you buy it. Fuel becomes contaminated because of two primary reasons: refining and storage.
The industry has developed increasingly sophisticated refining methods to achieve higher yields of gasoline and diesel fuels from crude. While economically desirable, today’s fuels are far less stable than those of even a decade ago. The effect is an increase in the incidence of bacteria, sludge, and emulsion. Water dispersing additives also create an emulsion that is recognized by the water separators as fuel, but to the engine it is water and this leaves you with a poorly functioning engine.
All storage tanks are vented to the atmosphere. During storage and transport, fuel is exposed to oxygen, particulate contamination, humidity, and airborne bacteria and spores. Water collects on the bottom of the tank and creates an environment perfect for the growth of bacteria. If fuel is left unchecked, slimy deposits, pitting, and tank corrosion will occur.
Fuel left untreated will cause blocked fuel lines, dirty nozzles and injectors, clogged filters, and loss of engine combustion.
CONTAMINATED DIESEL FUEL
Contaminated fuel can damage your engine. Today’s diesel engine manufacturers call for fuel to meet or exceed ISO cleanliness levels of 18/16/13 with a water content of less than 0.05%. Not long ago, diesel engines were quite simple. Not very efficient, smoked, and burned high sulfur fuel, as much as 5,000 ppm. The older diesel injection systems only use about 1⁄2 the fuel pressure modern engines do. Older injectors send the fuel through much larger passages. If there was a little moisture in the storage tank, the high sulfur content killed most of the filter clogging bacteria and fungi.
Today’s diesel fuel is ultra-low sulfur: 15 parts ppm. This allows filter clogging bacteria and fungi to grow rapidly if any moisture is in the fuel storage tank. Modern diesel engines use high pressure, 27,000 to 35,000 psi fuel injectors with tiny fuel passages which are easily clogged with dirty fuel and damaged by water.
The days of using grandpa’s old boat or tractor filters on your diesel fuel tank are over. The old-style fuel filters and gravity water separators that remove 75% to 99% of the contamination are not good enough for today’s diesel engines. Magnets and filter-less devices won’t clean fuel to ISO 18/16/13 or remove water to less than 100 PPM.
PHASE SEPARATED ETHANOL BLENDED FUELS
Phase Separation happens to ethanol blended gasoline when water is present. When gasoline containing Ethanol comes in contact with water—either liquid or in the form of humidity—the Ethanol will absorb some or all of that water. When it reaches a saturation point, the Ethanol and water will Phase Separate, actually coming out of solution and forming distinct layers on the fuel tank bottom. The result could lower the octane to a point where the engine will not run; or if the alcohol/water mixture is ingested into the engine, sever damage can occur.
Bulk fuel storage tanks should be regularly checked for water and maintained to prevent phase separation. Laboratory tests have proven that a well designed fuel polishing system will remove the separated phase from the fuel tank in one pass through the system without effecting the clean fuel.
