When To Treat For Cold Flow: Navigating Diesel's Seasonal Challenges
As winter beckons, a prudent eye turns towards the fuel tanks and the specter of cold flow problems that lurk in the colder months. Understanding...
2 min read
Bell Performance : Mar 29 2011
Today's backup fuels require more care than the fuels of yesterday. Fuel maintenance, if you will. Without it, you're much more likely to encouter water and microbial growth problems in the kinds of essential emergency fuels that generators, hospitals, and municipalities rely on.
Do you have reason to suspect you’re running on diesel or biodiesel contaminated by microbes, bacteria and fungus? Here are some signs to look for which can give you a pretty good idea:
Some of these problems are more commonly seen in fleets and vehicle situations while others lend themselves to a greater extent in fuel storage and backup generator system. But any and all of these symptoms can indicate a microbial infestation, whether in your own storage tank or the place where you get your fuel from. Microbial contamination is now the biggest cause of fuel problems in stored fuels.
The best way to prevent microbial diesel fuel contamination is to control water buildup in tanks. Bell Performance Dee-Zol and DFS Plus are formulated to do this. But even the best housekeeping methods can fail sometimes, especially if not everyone in the supply chain is doing the same thing. Once you have a microbial problem, the only way to permanently end it is to kill it with a biocide like Bell Performance Bellicide. Controlling water is important, but as microbes don't need very much water present to grow and thrive, the chances are much higher that, at some point in your system's professional service life, you're going to have to deal with a microbial contamination problem.
Lastly, one thing the upstream oil and gas market has taught us is the utility of microbial testing. If your system is in the "mission critical" category, it may be worth your while to consider upgrading to some kind of periodic microbial testing of fuel samples from your system. In-field microbial testings like ATP-By-Filtration can give you a much clearer picture of whether you have microbial contamination (and how much), as well as being an invaluable tool to show if the problem has been solved.
Do you have any other experiences? Feel free to comment and let us know.
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