Question: I have two 5 gallon jugs of Renewable Diesel that are only a few months old, but sit in the garage and became gelled. Lots of big white flakes. I decided to filter out these flakes before adding Stabil diesel fuel storage. Now I am wondering if by filtering out those flakes I have removed some essential ingredient from the fuel? I can't find an answer to this anywhere in my searching and I don't want to rely on speculation. Any fuel experts here have any insights? Thanks!
Diesel fuel health after gelling and filtering?
- Thread starter Salish1300
- Start date
It's the paraffin that crystallizes out of the fuel and that I filtered out. So the question is whether that serves any function to lubricate the injectors or is it totally extraneous? I've read that they try to remove most of it from diesel fuel to avoid excessive gelling, but that doesn't mean it isn't necessary in small quantities. Any fuel chemists around?
No diesel expert here, but can't it just be brought inside and allowed to warm up and everything goes back to the way it should be?
Maybe I didn't say this clearly enough above but I filtered all the gelled paraffin out of the fuel and threw it away. Thus the question of whether removing those flakes of paraffin has a bad effect on the remaining fuel.
By removing the paraffin, you removed a fair amount of lubricity. I would add some Power Service silver bottle, Stanadyne, or even a fairly strong dose of TCW3 2 stroke oil (like 200:1) to put some lubricity back in it. Depends on what you’re putting it in-an old rotary IP like the DB2 in my F-450-load it up; in a newer common rail diesel, not as big of a deal.
Can't lube any worse than the low sulfur diesel we buy anyway.
Run it! If really worried, pour 5 gallons in each tank full.
Thanks folks. I use it in my Kubota block four cylinder diesel on our sailboat. Basic wonderful diesel with 32 hp. I already use biobor and stanadyne for lubrication. And I only have 10 gallons of it that would blend with about 50 gallons of unmolested, so it would be diluted at least 1:5.
All it needed was thawing out though, just FYI for the next time. Once thawed you can add anti-gelling additives.
