Archives

In the UK diesel has just come down to an average of £1.25 for a Litre, that,s around 10 dollars for a US gallon!! Last month the average was £1.35. My 1997 Renault Laguna turbo D was cheap, and working for a well known UK airline we have LOTS of waste jet A-1. I commute 100 miles a day, some times 6 days a week running on waste jet fuel. OK, so I have been stealing waste fuel saving my employers the cost of disposing of it. Prior to this it ran on neat sunflower oil straight from the store shelf, no problems at all.

Are we basically talking kerosene?

I have heard rumours of people buying corn oil here off the supermarket shelf - but nothing confirmed

Are we basically talking kerosene?

Pretty much.

How's your fuel pump? I worked with a guy that had his Seat Cordoba 1.9tdi running on kerosene. His fuel pump died quickly and after then researching a little more, found that by adding some vegetable oil and mixing it with the kerosene, his pump never died again. Lubrication was the issue with his kerosene. Maybe jet kerosene is different??

ollie

Fuel pump is fine, I occasionally add a couple of litres of mineral hydraulic oil to help things along. One of the main requirements of a jet fuel apart form its combustion characteristic is that it offers the fuel system of the aircraft good lubrication properties :) This engine seems to be pretty well bomb proof and as an added bonus it is non interference as we found out when the cam belt failed

I have heard the same thing as ollie regarding fuel pumps having troubles due to lack of lubricity. If you look at table 4 at http://www.dieselnet.com/papers/9705howell.html, jet A-1 ends up with 0.66mm on an HFRR test. I believe petroleum diesel is about 0.5mm (lower is better). A splash of biodiesel gives jet A-1 a big lubricity boost.

Here is a report from Bosch which shows some effects of fuel lubricity on fuel pumps: http://www.licroc.org/Tech%20Articles/diesel%20fuel.pdf. HFFR 0.65mm fuel ends up causing unacceptable wear.