Dirty Diesel Fuel

[Chris142]

I have never had any fuel problems myself. Infact I have never seen any water when I drain my filter. The trucks at my work sure do have dirty fuel problems.

Part of my job is changing fuel filters @ every PM. And they are always dirty.

Our fuel is delivered by a high volume local dealer. They put the fuel into a tank and we fill the equipment from that tank.

The fuel is ran through a large filter before going into the equipment.

My guess is that the tank is dirty. But you would think the filter on the pump would filter it out.

 

[MParr]

Water is a big problem with diesel fuel. On some tractors that I’ve operated, I would have to drain the fuel filters twice a day.

 

[wpod]

Bacteria grows in diesel fuel . It is something that needs to be checked.

 

[meadows]

Check the microns on the tank filter. It is probably a 30 micron filter. I would put another finer filter after it.

 

[JimPghPA]

I have never worked with Diesel, but from what I once read about maintaining Diesel fuel quality on large ocean-going vessels, if you are running a pump and filter constantly and returning the unused fuel back to the same tank that it was taken from, it is going to take running the pump something like running the volume of the tank 9 to 12 times the volume of the tank to get the quality of filtration that can be achieved with having a empty tank and transferring the whole tankful through the filter on its way to the empty tank. Therefore if you want to continually maintain a very large quantity of Diesel, it would be much easier to maintain if the fuel were in multiple small tanks so you can empty one (pumping out from a full tank) into a previously emptied one, and then empty a second one into the newly empty tank, and so on, again pumping the next one into the newly espied tank while filtering during pumping each time.

Apparently, when working with large quandies, when they want to maintain the fuel at high quality, they do not just filter it as it goes to the equipment.

 

[Capt]

I have never worked with Diesel, but from what I once read about maintaining Diesel fuel quality on large ocean-going vessels, if you are running a pump and filter constantly and returning the unused fuel back to the same tank that it was taken from, it is going to take running the pump something like running the volume of the tank 9 to 12 times the volume of the tank to get the quality of filtration that can be achieved with having a empty tank and transferring the whole tankful through the filter on its way to the empty tank. Therefore if you want to continually maintain a very large quantity of Diesel, it would be much easier to maintain if the fuel were in multiple small tanks so you can empty one (pumping out from a full tank) into a previously emptied one, and then empty a second one into the newly empty tank, and so on, again pumping the next one into the newly espied tank while filtering during pumping each time.

Apparently, when working with large quandies, when they want to maintain the fuel at high quality, they do not just filter it as it goes to the equipment.

Some vessels have a fuel polishing system onboard.
If abIe I like to run the fuel polisher Before a long passage to help save my main engine filters from fouling.
Bacteria or algae sludge (whatever it is) will absolutely grow in a deisel & water mixture and wreck havoc, of course it only shows itself in high seas when things get “Stirred” up.

 

[tnt_motorsports]

I have never had any fuel problems myself. Infact I have never seen any water when I drain my filter. The trucks at my work sure do have dirty fuel problems.

Part of my job is changing fuel filters @ every PM. And they are always dirty.

Our fuel is delivered by a high volume local dealer. They put the fuel into a tank and we fill the equipment from that tank.

The fuel is ran through a large filter before going into the equipment.

My guess is that the tank is dirty. But you would think the filter on the pump would filter it out.

Has the filter been changed on the tank? Is it a bypass filter? It could be plugged and not working. In my line of work we see lots of off road equipment with fuel injector issues because of these style of tanks.

As far as your truck if you are buying fuel at a busy place then the fuel is turned often. To me this is the secret of owning a diesel! Shop at the busiest place not necessarily the cheapest place. Saving a few cents per tank on a several thousand dollar HPCR system seems like the opposite of an ounce of prevention beats a pound of cure strategy... I have never had water in either my under bed filter or on engine filter in my Cummins Ram in my signature. I do change filters every year as a PM.

Just my $0.02