Kerosene in diesel

[Ratau]

Here in South Africa the occasional becomes regular to find kerosene mixed into diesel.
There were a topic about this but it seems to be lost with the rest off valuable info.

Britannic wrote some time ago according to MIL SPEC the DB2 pumps could run on Diesel, Jet Fuel and Kerosene. (A link to that topic please)

Are the stock DB2 pumps on the same spec as the military versions?

To be safe is to add 2-stroke oil to the diesel, what percentage?

Danie

[DmaxMaverick]

The engine will run fine on kerosene. The problem lies with kerosene's lack of lubrication. There may also be a little power and economy loss if there is a high content of kerosene.

You can use two stroke oil to supplement the lubrication if you like. You can also use motor oil. The lubrication properties of both are about the same in this case. We don't worry about fouling spark plugs. There is no advantage to using two stroke oil in a Diesel engine, verses motor oil.

A ratio of about 100:1 would be safe. This would be for straight kerosene. It doesn't take much oil. You could vary the oil, depending on the ratio of #2/kero. If it has less than 25% kero, I wouldn't worry about it at all. Too much oil won't hurt anything. May smell a little and costs more. I know of several farmers that use waste engine oil mixed with #2 and burn it in their tractors and farm trucks. I haven't heard of any problems because of it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

[CleviteKid]

Hi Danie,

Someone else will have to provide the link. The commercial DB-2 pumps are not hardened to the degree that the military ones are, but the Arctic package available from Stanadyne dealers (have any in South Africa?) will provide the same resistance to wear with poor fuel.

Agreeing with Dmax, you can add a good dose of 2-stroke oil to the fuel, up to one quart per 10 gallons, if you are so inclined and want to pay the money. Not only will this enhance the lubricity of the fuel, but the increase in viscosity will make the DB-2 and the injectors perform better (less leakage) and will also increase the cetane number a little bit.

Many ship diesels run on No. 6 or Bunker fuel oil, which is essentially solid at room temperature, and needs to be heated with steam to melt it enough to pump it and inject it. And don't forget, Rudy Diesel's original idea was to run his engine on powdered coal blasted into the combustion chamber with a jet of high pressure air. Even though oil was substituted for the coal, this air-blast injection was all that was available for diesels until the 1920's. All the U-boats in WW-I operated with air-blast injection. A typical engine of the day had six cylinders - four for diesel power and two as a compound compressor for the air-blast injection.

We have Bosch in Europe and Cummins in North America to thank for so-called solid injection, in which the fuel alone was pressurized sufficiently to inject and atomize it for combustion.

Dr. Lee :cool:

[Ratau]

The argument in the lost topic was that engine oil isn

[britannic]

In addition to the lack of lubrication, kerosene has less cetane than diesel and thus less power in a diesel engine set up for #2.

[Vaughn MacKenzie]

Ratau, that may be true for gasoline engines but not necessarily for diesels. Typical flash point for engine oil is something like 460F, and during compression and injection on a diesel engine temps are much higher than that. . .the oil will burn and burn completely. Of course when it's mixed with diesel fuel in small concentrations then the flash point is effectively dropped to about what diesel is (approx 200F?).

On my last Cummins truck I ran many gallons of used motor oil through the tank (after allowing to settle for 2 weeks then filtering) with no ill effects. I removed the injectors after 50,000 miles of driving and burning 25 or so gallons of oil and there were no deposits to speak of on the injectors.

Cummins says for their engines to add 1-2 quarts of fresh motor oil to approx 25 gallons of Jet or Kerosene when you are forced to run it.

Vaughn