Anyone Using Emulsified Diesel Fuel?

[cannongeorge]

A regulatory agency is suggesting a new requirement for me, to require all diesel engines at a jobsite to use emulsified diesel fuel. (This would be fuel with additional water content added, to reduce Nox emissions - not the same as bio-diesel). This is a relatively small project, and as it is no emissions triggers are otherwise met.

While I can verify there were some test projects and emulsified fuels floating around about 5 or 6 years ago, none of the bulk diesel fuel distributors in my area no longer carry this fuel.

I am curious, is there a recognized ASTM standard for emulsified fuel? Would using it violate/threaten engine warranties?
Also, for engines already brought onto the jobsite with CARB PERP (California Portable Equipment Registration Permits) - would introduction of this fuel potentially violate the CARB requirements?
Is this fuel available in both road and non-road (red dye) versions? (It costs significantly more, so this could be important as well)

I'll have to send trucks to refineries near Los Angeles (120 miles each way) to pick up this fuel. Never mind I've gone ahead and already figured out that the emissions from from the trucks used to pick up and deliver this fuel to me will exceed any possible net emissions reduction by switching to this fuel in the first place!

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

 

[JLeake]

Sounds like another CARB (California Air Resources Board) boondoggle.

 

[Regcabguy]

Sure does. Add it to the list.

 

[Tuesdak]

Water and injectors, injection pumps, close tolerance parts, anything that will rust, and parts requiring diesel fuel for lube don't mix. When they do they require replacement at high cost. Worse is water mixed in fuel will encourage diesel bug growth. Diesel bugs are mold, fungus, and bacteria that make the fuel acidic and plug filters. This acidic wet bug laden fuel will ruin the entire fuel system from the fuel tank to the injector tips with a rusty slime eating through and coating everything.

Traditionally bugs grow at the fuel water interface in the bottom of the tank. With the new ULSD and Biodiesel the fuel will suspend/emulsify enough water to grow the bugs IN THE FUEL! You need a biocide that works in the fuel, no falling to the tank bottom to work on the water fuel interface like obsolete products do. So if you have a cold steel object that dispenses lead at high speed held to your head to add more water to already borderline troublesome modern ULSD fuel at least make sure you are running a biocide and switch types of the poison/pesticide often to keep the bugs dead before they become an expensive issue.

A regulatory agency needs to spend their own money on this bad idea not yours and risk more of yours with warranty denied 'bad fuel' claims ruining expensive injection systems. ULSD is bad and hygroscopic enough alone without adding more water to it. After all your engine met the requirements at the date of production on the fuel specified on that date.

 

[MLee]

State and federal agencies that deal with EPA have pipe dreams all the time. some one comes up with an idea (Ethanol) and says this is the answer with out doing any testing. Now they are thinking of changing once again here and going to Tier 3 for gas. Won't have it for a couple more years, to much modification to be done @ the refinery level. Newer cars better emissions and better mileage and we still have the worst Inversions we have ever had. Don't figure. We live in a hole, its to be expected.

 

[Crazy Horse]

Sounds like another CARB (California Air Resources Board) boondoggle.

IMO >>> CARB can annex itself from THE USA along with the EPA to a remote uninhabited island out by Hawaii. That is about as big a government debacle can get!!!! It had good intentions when it started cleaning the great lakes up back in the 70's but has way over reached it's original intent of conception. I grew up in Northern Ohio as a kid and I remember raw sewage floating in the lake after the storm drains got a good rain. I remember the funny weird smelling red water that flowed down the creek that passed through BFG's chemical plant. We use to go into that water, knee deep, sometimes swimming to follow the 5' under ground drain that went a few 100 yards out, under the power companies land to get behind the power company to go fishing. That was the only way to get back to the hydro-electric water outlet to catch tons of carp, cat fish, white bass, etc. And a few years after that time, around 1977, I'm sitting in a bar out in Wyoming in the middle of a hot summer day having a beer passing through an Indian reservation and the guy sitting next to me asks"where a bout's are you from?", I replied "up northern Ohio around Lake Erie". He said "is it true there is a river that catches on fire if you through a match in it because it's so polluted?". And I said "yes there is, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland." Funny thinking about it then that that was the only thing he knew about Ohio, and then I thought "ya and that's when I spend all my vacation time out here exploring the Rocky Mountains and Northern points from there. The waters so clean you can drink out of the cricks, and the pine smell in the fresh air when the wind blows. Well things got cleaned up pretty darn good and quick. And well with those good intentions pretty much fulfilled by the EPA by the late 80's, early 90's it (EPA) should have been shut down. It the EPA has no place in America to tell auto manufacturers how to engineer cars and trucks when they don't have a clue on the subject to begin with, let alone the consequences their demand will behold. That is why other parts of the world have all of our good paying manufacturing and industrial jobs today. But the interweaving of bureaucracies had way allowed the way over reaching of this monster. I'm surprised it's not involved in managing our health care. I just hope the "Diesel Fuel" we are allowed to use in our trucks today remains good enough not to cause detrimental harm to my 2002 Cummins. It's a shame I have to even have say that thinking back in the day when we actually HAD A CHOICE of Sunoco 260 or Super Shell Hi Octane (107-112) Fuel. Cause this 02 the last Diesel for me with this new crap (traps, def??, afterburners, excess turbo heat, ETC.) being put on the new trucks today. The 02 still smells new inside and only has 75,000 miles on it. Had to have a new evap and heat core done last year so it's good for another at least 15 years which will put me at 75 if I last that long.
I now this has been a rant but some things just hit a nerve with me!