Diesel is the fuel of choice for transportation and industrial fuel usage. And well it should be. Diesel engines last longer than spark-ignition engines do. Diesel fuel isn't as highly refined as gasoline and doesn't have quite the flammability and refinery additization requirements as the more volatile gasoline.
High-volume diesel users - corporate and municipal vehicle fleets - deal with diesel fuel-related problems through additization, which makes for a very large diesel fuel additive market. Fuel mileage maximization, control of water build-up in stored fuel, improving vehicle cold-starting and elimination of rough running - all are areas of improvement for the typical diesel fuel user, both large and small.
Fuel mileage directly impacts the budget of every large diesel fuel user and the financial bottom line of the small one. Combustion improvers can help stretch this out, as can cleaning and removing deposits in the combustion chamber, valves and injectors of diesel engines that can accumulate these fuel-sinks over the 500,000 to 1 million miles of their usable life. Gradually restoring the engine back to it's original condition can recapture lost fuel milage and performance.
Controlling the build-up of water in diesel fuel is crucial for all diesel users large and small, both for minimizing water-related oxidative degradation of the stored fuel over time, the minimizing of possible injector blowouts (if water in the fuel tank gets sucked up into the injectors) and for the prevention of microbial growth in stored fuels. Microbial gr
owth in diesel is very nearly a universal problem and will happen to almost every large diesel user at some point. Poor fuel performance and slimy clogged filters are the initial symptoms.
The advent of ultra-low sulfur diesel in 2006 also brought other fuel problems to the forefront - lubricity and cold flow properties. Since the 1990s, EPA mandate have slashed the amount of sulfur in diesel fuel to less than 1% of its former level. This helps the environment and helps curb sulfurous urban air pollution (caused in large part by diesel traffic from large vehicles like trucks and buses). The down side to stripped all the sulfur out is you get a diesel fuel with lower lubricity (the ability of the fuel to provide lubrication) and poorer cold-flow properties. The fuel now does not lubricate injectors and fuel pumps nearly as well, and it gels at higher temperatures. Some users got around this gelling problem in the past by mixing kerosene into their #2 diesel. But this runs them afoul of the sulfur regulations. All of this spells bad news for trucks and fleets up north in the winter.
Bad news too is the fact that the exemption for non-road diesel fuels (like marinas and generators) is now coming to an end. Very soon all #2 diesel fuel for every diesel application will need to be low-sulfur.
Fuel additization can remediate a lot of these problems in a cost-effective manner. Bell Performance developed it's first multi-purpose diesel fuel treatment in the 1950s. Many additive "formulators" have come and gone in that time, but Bell Performance is still around, standing alone as the nation's oldest manufacturer of quality fuel treatment products.