Does white diesel result in better mpg than red?

[Bandit]

HI All,

My main business is selling MGO and HFO to the commercial shipping world. while I agree with the sentiment that performance difference between Automotive diesel and dyed MGO is minimal (+/- 5-8% once additives and varying treatments and machinery used to burn the fuel taken into account) there are a few side notes things to be aware of in the differences between the two. The majority of Dyed MGO that finds its way into the tanks of our leisure boats is 1000ppm sulphur content. Compare that to Automotive at 10ppm, and you quickly realise the product we burn on our leisure boats (with our nearest and dearest around breathing it in) is far more harmful than what you put into your diesel car at home, which even at 10PPM is considered to be harmful to the environment and very toxic. Thats a 100x increase in sulphur emissions on our leisure boats compared to our cars. MGO is also generally laying in various storage tanks for longer, is more contaminated with sediment and water than automotive diesel (by quite some margin), and while diesel doesn't deteriorate at the rate of petrol, still loses aromatic (CCAI) and combustion properties over time. Depending on the time of year, MGO can also have horrendous cold properties, with wax formations (cloud point) happening at temps significantly above zero, causing filtration blockages, due to high waxy paraffin content (which actually has great combustion properties, when warm). MGO for use in commercial ships, which has found its way into the leisure industry, is actually designed to be treated on board before combustion, by additional purification (gravity plate centrifugal filtration) and heating where necessary. Our leisure boats are not actually equipped to handle MGO well at all. It is also worth factoring in the SG (Specific Gravity) of Automotive can be around 0.82 compared to MGO at 0.89. quite a difference in large volumes, and often changes the way the fuel can be handled / consumed by more sensitive diesel equipment.

The one overriding benefit of MGO over automotive, is the fact it is FAME (fatty acid) free, with less than trace BIO content, unlike the automotive product which often contains around 8% Bio product, significantly shortening the useful life of the fuel, unless treated with biocide and stabiliser, and meaning less risk to leisure users storing MGO for long periods over winter layups, for example.

It is quite possible, running a modern diesel with a particularly bad batch of MGO, versus automotive grade, given the right operating conditions, could result in a significant performance delta, maybe in the region of 25% in best to worse case examples.

Hope the above helps.

An interesting explanation, Thank You.

 

[A_8]

My experiance of white vs green (assuming its the same quality as red) is that the engines run much cleaner, with less smoke and smell on white diesel however top rpm is maybe 50-75 rpm higher with green diesel on the KAD 43.

It seems though that where I live white diesel for boats is not always the same as what you get on land for the car, don't remeber the spec now but if you know what to look for there is a "white" quality diesel without FAME.