Is paraffin the same as diesel?

[colvic987]

How big is your tank

what is the percentage of parrafin to diesel

is the tank now full or is there room to top up significantly

does parrafin separate when mixed with diesel

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If parrafin separates then try and pump most of the liquid out.

if your tank is large enough and your able to fill with more diesel fill up and mix, so that the overall mix will do nothing to damage the engine

or pump the lot out and let it separate over time, then reuse in small quantities in tank.

 

[DownWest]

When at a Norfolk airfield which was off the grid, we ran the heating and genset off the same tank of heating oil. Going fine when I left after 4yrs. Not the same as parrafin, so a bit of oil in the mix sounds right.
A

 

[alant]

I kid you not!

It is obviously not a very advanced engine, non turbo, 2.5 litre, 60,000 mile vintage at the time, no performance (once started) difference at all.

A litre of derv in a petrol engine is curtains however!

Mistakenly filled my VW Golf with diesel a few years ago, only noticed it when saw smokey exhaust & poor acceleration going up a nearby hill. Checked fuel receipt & oops!

Drove back to petrol station, eventually found a large container + tubing, disconnected fuel line & syphoned most of tank. Restarted, drove to nearest petrol pump & filled to brim.

For next few weeks, engine was livelier than before & ran great, bit like adding REDEX.
No other effects noticed.

SWMBO, also did same to her Mini without any problems.

 

[snowleopard]

A litre of derv in a petrol engine is curtains however!

Why? - Apart from getting hauled over for emitting smoke.

 

[capt_courageous]

petrol is designed NOT to combust under compression, so it won't!

It sure will. The posh name is pre-ignition but better known as pinking or knocking.

 

[Morven]

This might help you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerosene

 

[marklucas]

It will run

Many diesel trains are run on a 25% mix of paraffin and diesel in winter, as the paraffin stops the diesel coagulating / freezing.

You may recall that the cause of the fire in the Ladbroke Grove train crash was that the Thames Train was running on such a mix, and as soon as the paraffin hit something hot e.g. exhaust pipe off it went, taking the diesel with it.

 

[mlines]

What you want is the Armstrong Siddeley Mamba Turboprop Engine, an engine that was designed in 1946 to run on any fuel that was handy, including bunker oil. Strange how in someways we have moved backwards as time passes.

 

[snowleopard]

We see this question regularly. You can be sure that some posters will say a diesel will run on peanut butter & old socks and someone will reply that a .0001% addition of petrol will destroy the engine in seconds.

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

I kid you not!

It is obviously not a very advanced engine, non turbo, 2.5 litre, 60,000 mile vintage at the time, no performance (once started) difference at all.

A litre of derv in a petrol engine is curtains however!

A litre of derv in a full petrol engine tank should do no more than give an oily burn or soot up/oil up the plugs but with no other damage. Continued use like this ...unadvisable.
I did run an old petrol Transit from South Oxfordshire to Nottingham after filling up with diesel accidentally in the 70's. I kept it running at Nottingham on the motorway (white smoke everywhere!!!) and topped up with petrol at Nott's and eventually it cleared itself and it went better than ever for years afterwards.

It is the other way round that causes a major problem. Diesel engines being higher compression than petrol, cannot compress the petrol mixture as they do diesel, and so there is a big risk of damaging con rods, ends and crank.
it's even worse if you go through a flood in a diesel engined car, suck up water into the intake and the chances are very slim it will survive
These days diesel at the garage pump has additive that prevents diesel from waxing in freezing weather, but in days gone by it was often heard of to put a small %age of petrol in the diesel tank to prevent this.... not so good though as too much causes the petrol to 'wash' the bores of the cylinder and so the rings and cylinder risk being damaged through lack of lub'.

 

[snowleopard]

It is the other way round that causes a major problem. Diesel engines being higher compression than petrol, cannot compress the petrol mixture as they do diesel, and so there is a big risk of damaging con rods, ends and crank.

Diesel engines compress air, not air/fuel mixture.

 

[Sybarite]

You have to be very careful with the diesel injection pump which constitutes very high precision engineering with tolerances which attain 1/10 of a micron. Certain component parts are manufacted in sets and are not thereafter interchangeable. The pump is lubricated by the diesel passing through it and so it is important not to run out of fuel. In which case I would not run with paraffin which has a degreasing effect.

 

[sarabande]

ML

IF paraffin was mixed in the diesel tanks of the Ladbroke Grove crash, it's news to me. The fuel on the two trains was winter grade in one and summer grade in the other.

The company I was working with in 1999 had several people on that train. I was the EP planner for the company at that time.

The diesel tanks were squashed during the dynamic stage of the accident by the bogies as the coaches collapsed. They were adjacent to battery banks, and the fuel was forced out under pressure as a fine spray. Sparks from the collision or electrical sparking could have ignited the diesel mist resulting in a fireball. The remaining unburnt diesel in the other ruptured tanks, and other fuels onboard, caught fire after the fireball stage.

 

[TrueBlue]

I have it on reasonably good authority - and I think it has been reported on these fora, that some folks in the aviation industry run their cars on JetA1.
The fuel is waste, so not stolen and the cars in question are not exactly the latest model.

No, the cars don't "fly"

 

[Heckler]

I was told (by someone who worked for a major oil company) that you could run a diesel on home heating oil (kero not diesel) and 4% engine oil. My 1994 Landrover TDi ran on this for some time once retired to boat launching and off road use - clearly not road legal! No problem. In fact, much smoother.

Personally, I'd top up with diesel (clearly) and add the 4% engine oil because it has worked for me. Not scientific and likely to be shot down by those who know what they're talking about.

Youve got it in one. Some of the others, hmm
For what its worth, the heavier the oil (cause all fuel is oil) the more calorific value it has, so the b ollox about paraffin burning hotter, hmm. The sec measurement is the time it takes for a given amount to pass thru a std orifice at a fixed temperature. So 28sec oil, kerosene, paraffin, whatever you call it is thinner than 35 sec diesel fuel. Therefore delivers less calorific value per given volume.
Diesel engines will burn any oil, as long as it can be injected, the lighter fractions such as petrol will cause "pinking" and the timing would have to be retarded and of course the pump and injectors would suffer from lack of lubrication. Modern diesel engines have knock sensors and will shut down when petrol is mixed with the diesel and causes it to start "knocking"
The paraffin mix, as you say will be ok with some oil added.
Stu

 

[Heckler]

Why? - Apart from getting hauled over for emitting smoke.

Exactly!
Stu

 

[Heckler]

How big is your tank

what is the percentage of parrafin to diesel

is the tank now full or is there room to top up significantly

does parrafin separate when mixed with diesel

----------------------------------------

If parrafin separates then try and pump most of the liquid out.

if your tank is large enough and your able to fill with more diesel fill up and mix, so that the overall mix will do nothing to damage the engine

or pump the lot out and let it separate over time, then reuse in small quantities in tank.

paraffin and diesel are in essence the same, basically a light oil, one lighter than the other. Once mixed, they wont separate other than in a "cracker"!
Stu

 

[prv]

I too have always understood that normal diesels (ie not necessarily latest Vorsprung Durch Teknik car engines) could run fine on paraffin or central heating oil, with a bit of engine oil added in each case.

Certainly an old Lister engine could, as it says so in the manufacturer's instructions I was reading the other day.

Pete

 

[Heckler]

I too have always understood that normal diesels (ie not necessarily latest Vorsprung Durch Teknik car engines) could run fine on paraffin or central heating oil, with a bit of engine oil added in each case.

Certainly an old Lister engine could, as it says so in the manufacturer's instructions I was reading the other day.

Pete

In fact Im pretty sure that the instructions that came with the old Gardners said to filter the old engine oil and mix it with the diesel!
And nothing finer than a 16 cylinder 2 stroke Detroit Diesel, supercharged and turbo charged on full song attempting a runaway by burning its own lube and a daft bustard like me trying to close the "strangler"!!!

 

[Heckler]

I too have always understood that normal diesels (ie not necessarily latest Vorsprung Durch Teknik car engines) could run fine on paraffin or central heating oil, with a bit of engine oil added in each case.

Certainly an old Lister engine could, as it says so in the manufacturer's instructions I was reading the other day.

Pete

Here is some more info for the forum that I have found:

Fuel and fluid characteristics

Diesel or diesel fuel is a specific fractional distillate of fuel oil (mostly petroleum) that is used as fuel in a diesel engine invented by German engineer Rudolf Diesel. Petroleum derived diesel is composed of about 75% saturated hydrocarbons (primarily paraffins including n, iso, and cycloparaffins), and 25% aromatic hydrocarbons (including naphthalenes and alkylbenzenes). The average chemical formula for common diesel fuel is C12H26, ranging from approx. C10H22 to C15H32. The term "diesel" typically refers to fuel that has been processed from petroleum, but increasingly, alternatives such as biodiesel or biomass to liquid (BTL) or gas to liquid (GTL) diesel that are not derived from petroleum are being developed and adopted. Diesel engines can operate on a variety of different fuels, depending on configuration, though the eponymous diesel fuel derived from crude oil is most common. Good-quality diesel fuel can be synthesised from vegetable oil and alcohol. Biodiesel is growing in popularity since it can frequently be used in unmodified engines, though production remains limited. Petroleum-derived diesel is often called "petrodiesel" if there is need to distinguish the source of the fuel. The engines can work with the full spectrum of crude oil distilates, from compressed natural gas, alcohols, gasolene, to the "fuel oils" from diesel oil to residual fuels. The type of fuel used is a combination of service requirements, and fuel costs.
Diesel is produced from petroleum, and is sometimes called petrodiesel (or, less seriously, dinodiesel) when there is a need to distinguish it from diesel obtained from other sources such as vegidiesel (biodiesel) derived from pure (SVO) or recycled waste (WVO) vegetable oil. As a hydrocarbon mixture, it is obtained in the fractional distillation of crude oil between 250 °C and 350 °C at atmospheric pressure. The density of diesel is about 850 grams per liter whereas gasoline has a density of about 720 g/l, about 15% less. When burnt, diesel typically releases about 40.9 megajoules (MJ) per liter, whereas gasoline releases 34.8 MJ/L, also about 15% less. Diesel is generally simpler to refine than gasoline and often costs less (although price fluctuations sometimes mean that the inverse is true; for example, the cost of diesel traditionally rises during colder months as demand for heating oil, which is refined much the same way, rises).
Diesel powered cars generally have greater fuel economy than gasoline powered cars, which is due to the greater energy content of diesel fuel and also the intrinsic efficiency of the diesel engine. Proponents of diesel powered automobiles often cite this advantage as a way to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions. However, diesel's 15% higher volumetric energy density results in 15% higher greenhouse gas emissions per liter compared to gasoline[1], which offsets the increased fuel economy. In other words, a petrodiesel powered engine must have greater than 15% more fuel efficiency than a gasoline engine in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Also, diesel fuel often contains higher quantities of sulfur. European emission standards and preferential taxation have forced oil refineries to dramatically reduce the level of sulfur in diesel fuels. In contrast, the United States has long had "dirtier" diesel, although more stringent emission standards have been adopted with the transition to ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) starting in 2006 and becoming mandatory on June 1, 2010. U.S. diesel fuel typically also has a lower cetane number (a measure of ignition quality) than European diesel, resulting in worse cold weather performance and some increase in emissions. High levels of sulfur in diesel are harmful for the environment. It prevents the use of catalytic diesel particulate filters to control diesel particulate emissions, as well as more advanced technologies, such as nitrogen oxide (NOx) adsorbers (still under development), to reduce emissions. However, lowering sulfur also reduces the lubricity of the fuel, meaning that additives must be put into the fuel to help lubricate engines. Biodiesel is an effective lubricant.

"Residual fuels" are the "dregs" of the distilation process and are a thicker, heavier oil, or oil with higher viscosity, which are so thick that they are not readily pumpable unless heated. Residual fuel oils are cheaper than clean, refined diesel oil, although they are dirtier. Their main considerations are for use in ships and very large generation sets, due to the cost of the large volume of fuel consumed, frequently amounting to many tonnes per hour. The poorly refined biofuels straight vegetable oil (SVO) and waste vegetable oil (WVO) can fall into this category. Moving beyond that, use of low-grade fuels can lead to serious maintenance problems. Most diesel engines that power ships like supertankers are built so that the engine can safely use low grade fuels. Normal diesel fuel is more difficult to ignite than gasoline because of its higher flash point, but once burning, a diesel fire can be fierce.
Stu