Bio Diesel

[Silver Burner]

B20 is 20% bio and 80% conventional ULSD. B99 is 99%, B100 is 100%. I think in Oregon they're going to mandate B5 in all diesel soon, which may just be a good thing for our IP's.

 

[jonathan]

today i found a place that sells high sulfer red dye fuel....

 

[Diesel JD]

Are you still running the fuel line I made you? I believe it is just regular rubber

Yes I am still running your line. I often recommend your fine workmanship to other members. I thought it was hydraulic hose, but whatever it is it's been in there since we did the transaction, B100 or a high blend almost 100% of that time. As to the poster that says that 1/2 tank of biodiesel ate your IP I can't say, but what I can say is that in reasonably well made biodiesel the NaOH or KOH is removed by dry filtration or water washing. Yes there is probably a little residual soap in there but if it is caustic in the acidic or basic direction very much at all it is very poorly made stuff and nowhere near ASTM spec. Whether the original IPs could handle biodiesel or not is probably a question for Stanadyne or a really knowledgeable pump shop...and the correct question is what material were the original soft parts of those pumps. If the answer is viton, neoprene or some other non reactive material then they certainly could, if it was natural or n-butyl rubber problems are only a matter of time. Another explanation is that the advance piston was about ready to go anyway and the bio finished it off because in some cases a change in fuels can cause slight swelling or contraction of soft parts. This happened a lot in the early to mid 90s when they stepped down from the high sulfur 5000ppm diesel to the LSD that we had from 1996 or so until they started mandating the ULSD <15ppm circa 2007. It sometimes made the seals weepy due to a difference in the aromatic hydrocarbon content from what I have read. Not truly a compatibility problem but a problem of the seals being conditioned to the old fuel and swelling or shrinking with different stuff...but I guess the same crappy result. I will say the first DB2 I ran on B100 only made it 30,000 miles but that pump was my guinea pig, it had to endure my early, less than optimal (far from spec) biodiesel batches and in addition was run with plugged filters or completely out of fuel quite often. As if that weren't enough it was an el cheapo rebuild with perhaps cheap or old parts. Given the circumstances it didn't make me worry too much about the effects good or even decent biodiesel had on DB2s.