More Information on Diesel
Diesel or Diesel fuel generally is any fuel used in diesel engines. The most common is a specific fractional distillate of petroleum fuel oil, but alternatives that are not derived from petroleum, such as biodiesel, biomass to liquid (BTL) or gas to liquid (GTL) diesel, are increasingly being developed and adopted. To distinguish these types, petroleum-derived diesel is increasingly called petrodiesel. Ultra-low sulfur diesel(ULSD) is a standard for defining diesel fuel with substantially lowered sulfur contents. As of 2007, almost every diesel fuel available in America and Europe is the ULSD type.
The word "diesel" is derived from the German inventor Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (March 18, 1858 – September 30, 1913) who in 1892 invented the diesel engine.
Diesel engines are a type of internal combustion engine. Rudolf Diesel originally designed the diesel engine to use coal dust as a fuel. Then he experimented with vegetable oil (biodiesel) before the petroleum industry came out with the product now known as diesel fuel.
Diesel fuel is produced from petroleum and from various other sources. The resulting products are mostly interchangeable in most applications.
Algae, microbes, and water
There has been much discussion and misinformation about algae in diesel fuel. Algae require sunlight to live and grow. As there is no sunlight in a closed fuel tank, no algae can survive there. However, some microbes can survive there, and can feed on the diesel fuel.
These microbes form a colony that lives at the fuel/water interface. They grow quite rapidly in warmer temperatures. They can even grow in cold weather when fuel tank heaters are installed. Parts of the colony can break off and clog the fuel lines and fuel filters.
It is possible to either kill this growth with a biocide treatment, or eliminate the water, a necessary component of microbial life. There are a number of biocides on the market, which must be handled very carefully. If a biocide is used, it must be added every time a tank is refilled until the problem is fully resolved.
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