Diesel Fuel Question

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JohnP

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V E N T U R E
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1996 36' Island Gypsy Classic
What is the difference between home heating oil and diesel fuel?* Besides the price.
 
If you mean diesel fuel #2, there may be a lot or no difference. But* you'll never know because home heating oil is a mix of all sorts of "leftover" fuels. Heating fuel must be acceptable by a standard burner in your furnace with CH ratios,water, BTU's, flash point and SG as some main criteria. Diesel # 2 must meet a variety of tests including* tighter CH ratios, cetane, lubricity, Sulfur, SG, volatiles, water and ash.

The Chevron website is a very complete tutorial as are other sites.
 
sunchaser wrote:

If you mean diesel fuel #2, there may be a lot or no difference. But* you'll never know because home heating oil is a mix of all sorts of "leftover" fuels. Heating fuel must be acceptable by a standard burner in your furnace with CH ratios,water, BTU's, flash point and SG as some main criteria. Diesel # 2 must meet a variety of tests including* tighter CH ratios, cetane, lubricity, Sulfur, SG, volatiles, water and ash.

The Chevron website is a very complete tutorial as are other sites.

It sounds like I could drain fuel from the boat and use it in a home boiler, but to use heating fuel for the boat engine would not be advised.

*
 
A very long time ago, when I worked on a fishboat, we had a separate tank for home heating oil, that was used in the diesel stove.
On filling up, some of the fishermen would "inadvertently" put the hose in the wrong tank, thus saving much of the tax on the diesel. The engines ran fine on it.
 
Yes, your boat diesel would work fine in your home burner.

Aside from tighter specs for HC chain, pour point, volatility etc, most of today's marine diesel goes through a centrifuge process to remove water and dirt. This process requires very tight control on SG (density) so that the water can effectively be removed. Home heating oils may not always have this tight of a SG control since they are not always cleaned to the same extent as*marine diesel.

Again, heating oil my be perfect for your small boat engine today, but not so tomorrow.*For sure, if you havea TierII/II engine, best you stick with the marine number 2 diesel.

In the past, I*have worked with very*large stationary diesel gensets that can use virtually any fuel - they were designed to accept heavy bunker fuels. Some of these engines are used in large ships RickB is familiar with. Most of these fuels are no longer OK due to "pollution" concerns.

-- Edited by sunchaser on Sunday 2nd of January 2011 08:11:04 PM
 
There may be a big difference in the cetane rating , how hard it is for the fuel to light off.

Our 1980 VW Diesel Rabbit is our towd , gets towed behind out bus conversion.

The father of the fellow I bought it from passed away , the son lives on our street in Ct .

One day we stopped to chat , and his comment was "Wow what did you do? It sounds like a new car".

My answer was I run it on Diesel, (his dad a CT Yankee only used #2 house fuel).

IF you filter house fuel before putting it in the tank it works fine .
 
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