I have had quite a few trucks come in lately with fuel filters plugged.This iswierd because it has only been cold enough to do it a couple of times. This fuel is getting cloudy around 35 degrees if you put a clear bottle of it in the refridgerator. Some people were getting fuel from the same station, others were not. At first, I just figured it would be another learning curve as was when the fuel went to low sulfer. This time is different. I did some digging and called some distributers to see what they had to say. Some refinery's are using vegetable oil to cut the diesel for this new ultra low sulfer fuel. The vegetable oil seems to be working ok with little to no problems. Other refinery's are using some kind of animal fat to cut the diesel. This is where we are running into the problems or so they say. It does make sense though. Animal fat when you are cooking is liquid in form. Let it cool and it starts to harden. They also said that because of this, the oil is somewhat seperating from the diesel. We have had three stations in the area located right on the interstate switch suppliers because of this. They could be blowing smoke to try and give me a reason, but they all said the same thing. I live in East Central Illinois just to give you a location as to whereour problems are occurring. Just thought I would let you know what problems we have been facing. Hopefully they can get this figured out.

By the way. I have sworn by and told customers in the past to use PS in their fuel. But with this new fuel, we havn't had luck with it keeping the fuel from clouding up. We have had luck with PenRay products and a company called FPPF.

 

I ran some B20 in my truck and it gelled on me because I bought it back in the summer and it did not occur to me that it did not have any anti gel in it. I put a bottle of white PSD in the tank and it keeps it from gelling down to 13 degrees. The summer fuel that I had gelled right around 32-35 degrees.

It could also be that it is cheap fuel and they skimped on the anti-gel to save some money.

 

Filters are most likely plugging up with parifins, I doubt the oil companies (refiners) would be willing to spend the extra money required toinstall equipmentto cut or injectdiesel fuel with "vegetable oil" or "animal fat". Especailly when the equipement is already there for "cutting" with other lighter diesels or kerosen fuels.

 

How can you tell that your fuel is gelling up without syphoning some out?

 

I had a pretty good idea it was gelled because I had just poured a bunch of summer fuel that I bought back in September in the tank. It didn't even cross my mind that it probably did not have any anti gel in it until the truck would not start.

It got really cold and my truck started and ran for about 10 seconds. It would not start back. I pushed it into the work shop, built a fire in the stove and got it up to 80 degrees in the workshop. Let it set in the shop all day and it fired back up. Poured a bottle of white psd in the tank and it has been running fine ever since. I'm still burning the summer fuel that I bought at $2.89 a gallon. Just adding the white psd to it. I know it works down to 13F.

 

performanceag,


Being MN had a similar problem a few years back I wonder if some of the same anti gel additives that Flint Hills Resources in MN adds to their winter fuel and its not compatible with Bio is being used in IL. The state of MN had major problems in 2005 and 2006 because of this winter fuel additive being mixed in to #2 diesel and 2% Bio. In fact Flint Hills has this posted on their web site: that their Arctic Diesel is no longer available for use in biodiesel blends in the State of Minnesota and Arctic Diesel is not intended for Biodiesel blending. IIRC Arctic Diesel only caused problems when mixed in to some Bio diesel and not others, so it could be some was made for Soy oil and some from Animal fats like you have been told.