-
Can you run a diesel engine on heating oil or kerosine?
Posted by
woodchips
on 10 Jun, 2022 20:02
-
Electric heating is becoming more and more expensive. Have a Robin engine based diesel generator, runs on ordinary diesel but that is now expensive.
Will it run happily on heating oil or kerosine?
Diesel is a lubricant so the injection pump runs happily with it. Are heating oil and kerosine equally lubricating? Not much point in the pump seizing up after a few hours, or even lots of hours, running. Makes for very expensive fuel.
Heating oil and kerosine are both hydrocarbon fuels, so basically the same, similar calorific value to diesel, just less than half the price. I seem to remember that diesel engines for the military will run on any hydrocarbon like diesel, avgas springs to mind. Is this true?
Must be many people who could use a cheaper source of fuel for a generator.
-
#1 Reply
Posted by
langwadt
on 10 Jun, 2022 20:51
-
afaik heating oil and diesel i basically the same thing, sometimes it is even the same thing, it is just taxed differently
if you are concerned about lubricity add a bit of two-stroke oil
-
#2 Reply
Posted by
james_s
on 10 Jun, 2022 20:57
-
It will certainly run on either of those, although I do think kerosene is not as good at lubricating. If you live near a rural area you can often find off-road diesel too which is dyed red and doesn't have the road taxes. I know a guy in England who for a while was buying vegetable oil at Costco and running his diesel van off it, I think he did that for around a year and it didn't cause any issues with the old mechanically injected engine.
-
#3 Reply
Posted by
wraper
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:00
-
Heating oil and kerosine are both hydrocarbon fuels, so basically the same
Then gasoline and diesel also are basically the same by this merit. While you may have success with heating oil depending on how it was made, don't try kerosene. It will certainly damage the engine.
I seem to remember that diesel engines for the military will run on any hydrocarbon like diesel, avgas springs to mind.
Depends on type of the engine. Gas turbine engine can use multiple type of fuels. But it's not even close to usual ICE.
-
#4 Reply
Posted by
james_s
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:02
-
Probably not avgas, but jet-A which is kerosene with some additives. It is not uncommon at airports to run diesel vehicles like fuel trucks on jet fuel. It's more expensive than diesel typically but it's conveniently stocked on site.
-
#5 Reply
Posted by
IanB
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:03
-
-
#6 Reply
Posted by
jpanhalt
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:04
-
If you consider also "biodiesel" you might reconsider. A colleague of mine (10+ years ago) ruined the engine of his diesel Mercedes with college-lab made biodiesel from used caffertia cooking oil. He was a physical chemist and didn't understand how Hydrion pH paper works. Also, you cannot ignore the additives.
-
#7 Reply
Posted by
IanB
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:25
-
If you consider also "biodiesel" you might reconsider. A colleague of mine (10+ years ago) ruined the engine of his diesel Mercedes with college-lab made biodiesel from used caffertia cooking oil. He was a physical chemist and didn't understand how Hydrion pH paper works. Also, you cannot ignore the additives.
This is an important consideration. The diesel engines in cars and trucks are highly tuned and depend on carefully refined diesel fuel with the right lubricating properties and additives.
Heating oil will not in any way be designed for use in engines.
A crude diesel engine for non-automotive use might be more tolerant of poor fuel quality, but there would certainly be a risk.
-
#8 Reply
Posted by
langwadt
on 10 Jun, 2022 21:38
-
If you consider also "biodiesel" you might reconsider. A colleague of mine (10+ years ago) ruined the engine of his diesel Mercedes with college-lab made biodiesel from used caffertia cooking oil. He was a physical chemist and didn't understand how Hydrion pH paper works. Also, you cannot ignore the additives.
sure, but I doubt a robin engine has some fancy ultra high pressure pump common rail injection system, like cars now a days
-
#9 Reply
Posted by
jpanhalt
on 10 Jun, 2022 23:03
-
Biodiesel is made, at least in that case, by methanolysis of the fats. That is, convert the fatty esters to methyl esters under alkaline conditions. He thought the"neutral" color of Hydroin paper meant it was OK. What he didn't realize is that those indicators depend on water to work properly. With water, they were still very highly alkaline. He learned, but a little too late.
-
#10 Reply
Posted by
bdunham7
on 10 Jun, 2022 23:12
-
Will it run happily on heating oil or kerosine?
Happiness is relative, but it will run on those. You would want to keep the engine and the fuel from getting too cold if you are using heavier heating oils, and you would want to filter any non-diesel fuel very well. For kerosene you might want to also use a lubricant additive. An anti-gel combination additive like Power Service won't hurt.
-
#11 Reply
Posted by
bdunham7
on 10 Jun, 2022 23:23
-
I seem to remember that diesel engines for the military will run on any hydrocarbon like diesel, avgas springs to mind.
Depends on type of the engine. Gas turbine engine can use multiple type of fuels. But it's not even close to usual ICE.
The Hercules multifuel engines from Continental are/were 6-cylinder turbocharged multifuel engines that run on almost any liquid hydrocarbon that isn't excessively viscous. Gasoline in cold weather wasn't ideal IIRC, but they will run on motor oil, transmission fluid (quite smokily), jet fuel (probably not JP-7), kerosene, etc. They were very low power density but very rugged military truck engines.
-
-
I suspect the answer to this varies greatly with vendor, location and application.
I asked my vendor if the heating oil supplied to me was just untaxed diesel fuel. He responded that it was almost identical, with the addition of anti-bacterials to deal with the longer average dwell in the tank for heating fuel. It was a curiosity question. In my market the difference in price was a couple percentage points. Certainly not enough to risk cross use of the fuels.
-
#13 Reply
Posted by
Someone
on 10 Jun, 2022 23:54
-
If you consider also "biodiesel" you might reconsider. A colleague of mine (10+ years ago) ruined the engine of his diesel Mercedes with college-lab made biodiesel from used caffertia cooking oil. He was a physical chemist and didn't understand how Hydrion pH paper works. Also, you cannot ignore the additives.
sure, but I doubt a robin engine has some fancy ultra high pressure pump common rail injection system, like cars now a days
There are a range of different reports on the matter here:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=540694For people with a captive/waste source of an alternative fuel, some blending is likely fine.
Would I run my direct injected diesel on 100% kerosene? No, 30/70? sure. 100% heating oil? depending on the formulation. Cars are designed to use a fairly broad range of fuels in the different countries they are delivered to, so there is some overlap with alternatives.
-
#14 Reply
Posted by
abquke
on 10 Jun, 2022 23:57
-
I used Jet-A fuel to prime a fuel filter in a TDI I had once (long story) and the computer did a "I'm going to throw a code because that was weird", but nothing untoward happened to the engine.
Later on my dad and I made biodiesel and it worked alright in the older VW I had at the time. Bit of an investment and a big container of methanol requires some "don't be stupid" in handling and storage, but it's straightforward. The 'gotcha' on that one was that the biodiesel tended to gel in cold temperatures and I'm in a fairly warm climate. Generally depends on where the lipids came from.
-
#15 Reply
Posted by
james_s
on 11 Jun, 2022 01:16
-
It's worth remembering that this is a generator, not a high tech modern car. I can't say for sure without looking at it but I'm going to guess it's a primitive fully mechanically injected engine. Diesel engines made before about the late 90s are generally quite tolerant of variations in the fuel. They don't have computers and a generator isn't going to have a catalyst or particulate filter or anything like that. There is some risk in trying any un-approved fuel but if it were me and this is not an extremely valuable piece of equipment I'd probably give the heating oil a try.
-
#16 Reply
Posted by
David Hess
on 11 Jun, 2022 01:24
-
Either will work. Kerosene may not have the lubricity required. Heating oil should be filtered.
-
#17 Reply
Posted by
bdunham7
on 11 Jun, 2022 02:11
-
Diesel engines made before about the late 90s are generally quite tolerant of variations in the fuel.
The injection pumps and injectors are extremely precise and work at many thousands of psi even on old iron, so they are not tolerant of any type of abrasive contamination. Nor do they typically like ethanol and water.
-
#18 Reply
Posted by
BrokenYugo
on 11 Jun, 2022 05:47
-
Check the receipt, #2 heating oil is about the same, probably close enough in an old mechanical injected engine. Any lubricity concerns can be resolved with 2 cycle oil at a high ratio like 128/1 (1 oz/gal).
Personally I wouldn't mess with it though, a generator is something that I do all I can to make it as reliable and trouble free as possible. That includes using quality fuel.
-
#19 Reply
Posted by
Siwastaja
on 11 Jun, 2022 06:19
-
Electric heating is becoming more and more expensive.
So install heatpump(s). You are in a country where air source heatpumping works very well. This cuts your electricity use down to 1/3 or 1/4.
If you
still have shortage of electricity, then consider running the genset, use the power to run the heatpump, and collect the waste heat of the genset, for >100% total efficiency.
-
#20 Reply
Posted by
Someone
on 11 Jun, 2022 06:37
-
Electric heating is becoming more and more expensive.
So install heatpump(s). You are in a country where air source heatpumping works very well. This cuts your electricity use down to 1/3 or 1/4.
If you still have shortage of electricity, then consider running the genset, use the power to run the heatpump, and collect the waste heat of the genset, for >100% total efficiency.
The UK doesn't even have expensive electricity (comparatively world wide) such that discount fossil fuel in a generator is still likely to be more expensive than just buying the electricity from the grid (off grid of course has different economics). Over to the OP to explain their economics!
-
#21 Reply
Posted by
woodchips
on 11 Jun, 2022 09:20
-
Wow, thanks to all who replied, a useful standard post possibly?
Some more reading to follow up on.
Yes, the Robin is a very basic diesel engine, all mechanical injection. Used in things like generators, water pumps, in fact anything that 2.5kW is needed and the fuel consumption of the usual petrol/gas engine is just too much. Looking at the Machine Mart catalogue, in the UK suppliers of all sorts of engineeringy things, and the fuel consumption stated is vastly more than mains electricity, even threatened in 6 months time.
Air source, or ground source, heat pumps are a possibility but all my calculations over the years makes it an expensive source of energy. The snag in the UK is that whilst there are large handouts available, you can't just use the money to buy a simple ASHP, you have to have all the mains feed in, underfloor heating plus all the rest of the rubbish, end up at £15-20k, or more for GSHP. We are even allowed to fit one wind turbine in our garden for generation without planning approval.
We have insulated our standard 90's home as far as is easily possible. Lining the inside is a mammoth job and not at all easy. Best seems to be timber outside cladding with 25mm Celotex under it, but even that is a big job.
We are currently quoted £0.16 kWh night time and £0.33 kWh day, so running our 20kW Nightstor boiler is now expensive. Apparently going up in autumn but must say I rather think that we are being rooked. For years we paid about £0.05 kWh night and £0.12 day kWh, and whilst much dearer than gas was livable with.
-
#22 Reply
Posted by
woodchips
on 11 Jun, 2022 09:41
-
After lots of reading it seems that kerosine is better than paraffin, it is more highly refined so cleaner. Also both have less lubrication properties, the important thing, so as suggested adding 2 stroke to the fuel would be a good idea.
-
#23 Reply
Posted by
IanB
on 11 Jun, 2022 09:52
-
Have you considered buying red diesel sold for off road use, which should be taxed at a lower rate than white diesel? Assuming you can obtain it, the red diesel should still be good for diesel engines.
-
#24 Reply
Posted by
wraper
on 11 Jun, 2022 09:55
-
As already said, I fail to see how running a generator on heating oil will save you anything. Quick googling shows you would need about 0.4l/kWh with a good generator, while yours seems to be of less efficient type. Unless you buy heating oil for less than £0.82/l, even during the day and without considering maintenance of the generator (you want it to run on questionable fuel too), I fail to see how it will give you any savings. And quick googling shows heating oil costs around a pound per liter.