Use of Diesel Fuel Additives - Year Round

Use of Diesel Fuel Additives
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Additives's it’s not just for winter anymore

Once upon a time diesel engines were relatively simple pieces of big heavy, hard to break iron. You could put almost anything from kerosene to heating oil in them and they would run, maybe not well, but they would run.

Diesel fuel was considered a residual fuel, something left over from making the good stuff (gasoline). It was not supposed to be a good fuel; it was supposed to be a cheap fuel.

Even if this fairy tale was ever true (it actually was not), those days are long, long gone. Diesel engines today are as sophisticated as those of the worlds fastest Formula One race cars. These engines can have fuel system pressures of up to 35,000 psi and injector machining tolerances of 2 microns or less. Fuel filters that used filter down to 30 or 10 microns, now regularly filter down to 7, 5, and even 2 microns.

The new Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) that is now on the market is derived using various Catalytic Cracking refining processes that affect the quality of the fuel on many levels. The “new” ULSD has less oxidative stability, holds more suspended water, forms gums, varnishes, and carbon deposits more quickly, has less lubricity, gels at higher temperatures, is less thermally stable, is more corrosive, and in general is much more problematic.

In short the quality of the fuel has not kept up with the sophistication of the engines.

As a result you can no longer expect untreated fuel to meet the needs of your engines.

It is no longer good enough to treat your fuel just when it is cold outside. The needs for additional lubricity, higher Cetane, water dispersion, higher levels of oxidative and thermal stability, fuel injector cleaning, corrosion inhibition, fuel atomization require continuous year-round treating to protect your equipment and to maximize performance.