Posts Tagged :

Bulk Fuel

about-diesel-fuel
Fixing the problems with bugs growing in your diesel 1024 512 Star Oilco

Fixing the problems with bugs growing in your diesel

What to do about Biological Growth in Diesel Fuel.

Fuel Marketer News has two great articles on biological growth in fuel tanks. Star Oilco as a diesel fuel delivery provider in Oregon and Washington is all to familiar with this emerging problem with ultra-low sulfur bio-diesel blend fuels.

Where there is water, bugs can grow in diesel.

The Fuel Marketer News articles below:

Fuel System Bugs Drain Revenue, and
Bugs Cause Fuel System Damage (part 2)

These articles in a nutshell are about the costs, impact, and ongoing effect of bugs growing in fuel as a real industry issue. If you have filters clogging in your fleet–much like a heart attack–it’s not a symptom, it’s a late-stage problem. Clogged filters slow down your fleet fueling and add serious cost to your vehicle maintenance. Lost power on the highway also slows your drivers down, escalating the drain on efficiency fuel that bugs may be causing.

Star Oilco can cure these problems, both with stopping hum-bug growing in your diesel tanks, as well as ensuring that the water those fuel bugs live in stops migrating into your tank. We will help you solve diesel fuel quality issues.

The first step is for Star Oilco to test the bottom of your fuel tank, as well as take a representative nozzle sample that would go into your trucks. We will show you where your fuel quality is today and come up with a collaborative way to move that into exceeding ASTM diesel specification, as well as aligning with engine manufacturer’s ISO specifications for diesel fuel cleanliness.

If you have questions about fuel quality assurance, Star Oilco has solutions. Left unattended, your diesel fuel will grow bugs, alga, yeasts, and other biological active destroyers of fuel quality. If you need to treat your fuel to kill humbugs like these, Star Oilco recommends Bioguard Plus 6 as your go-to solution. It is both a biocide that kills the bugs growing in fuel, as well as a heavy duty detergent to clean up other deposits as well.

Star Oilco Precision Fuel Management tank test request form below:

Tank Testing Form

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
fuel-filtration-and-cleaning-up-your-diesel-fuel
Fuel Filtration and Cleaning Up your Diesel Fuel 1024 678 Star Oilco

Fuel Filtration and Cleaning Up your Diesel Fuel

Has your fleet experienced black diesel fuel or clogged fuel filters?  
Do you wonder what makes diesel go bad or cause further issues?  

contaminated_diesel

In most cases, it’s water and dirt in the fuel leading to further degradation over time. If gone unchecked it will lead to mechanical failures in your fleet.

 

Donaldson Filter has a great educational video about the high stakes importance of aggressive filtering of your diesel prior to going into your fleet. Today aggressive filtering and ongoing quality assurance of your fuel is a must. Star Oilco calls this Precision Fuel Management and we offer it to all of our bulk fuel customers.

Precision Fuel Management is the ongoing improvement of your diesel fuel quality.

This is done by adding aggressive Donaldson filtration to the dispenser on your diesel tank or filtering fuel on Star Oilco’s Mobile Onsite trucks when wet hosing our customers). For bulk storage tanks, we include a Donaldson desiccant breather to the vent on your tank to scrub moisture from the air as it is pulled into your tank, as well as Hydrotex PowerKleen Premium Diesel Additive. In addition to these best practices Star Oilco will also sample your tank bottom, as well as take a representative sample out of your diesel nozzle and lab test this fuel according to the ULSD ASTM standard D975, as well as check for the ISO cleanliness level of your fuel. We test twice a year going into Summer and Winter to confirm if there is water on the bottom of your tank as well as any worries about dirt, biological growth, or any other recurring, but preventable fuel quality problems.

NOTE: ASTM D975 is the specification for ultra low sulfur diesel in the United States. ISO Cleanliness is a standard to check for microscopic dirt that can harm the performance of your engine systems long term if it’s getting past your engine filtration. 

https://staroilco.net/bulk-fuel/biofuels/precision-fuel-management/

Diesel technology has advanced a long way in the last decade to meet the extremely high emission standards of the EPA and CARB for diesel engines. What this advanced diesel tech means is that your engine has extremely high-operating fuel pressures and extremely tight tolerances for the fuel acceptable to the long term use of your engine.

What does this mean in a nutshell?

High operating fuel pressures and tight tolerances in the fuel rail mean dirt and water can destroy injectors and affect the operation of your fleet. These two contaminants (dirt and water) are the source of most other fuel-related problems and therefore your highest exposure to preventable maintenance cost. If you have experienced unexplained fuel filter spinning, failed injectors, and DPF maintenance that is more than normal, it may be fixable with Precision Fuel Management.

Precision Fuel Management is aggressive filtration at the fuel dispenser combined with PowerKleen Premium Diesel and a clean dry tank bottom that is sampled and tested regularly. If you want to look into cleaning up your bulk fuel, give Star Oil a call. Our first step is a complementary test of your fuel.

If you have an immediate concern about biological growth and long-term storage with your diesel, we recommend an alternative stopgap measure. Treat your fuel with Bioguard Plus 6 to kill the bugs growing in your diesel fuel.

Fill out the form to get a complementary diesel tank test for ASTM and ISO cleanliness of your fuel.

Tank Testing Form

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

old-school-fleet-fueling-key-lock-system
Old School Fleet Fueling Key Lock System 1024 810 Star Oilco

Old School Fleet Fueling Key Lock System

Corporate fueling in the past was a far more complicated task than today’s Pacific Pride, WEX, Voyager, Fuelman, and CFN fleet cards.

Today, commercial fueling transfers data via satellite, securing and communicating in real time.

Prior to commercial cardlock and computerized site controllers for fleet fueling management, Key Locks were the standard. The way that Key Locks worked was simple. A vendor of fuel would set up a commercial fuel island or stand alone tank for diesel. Multiple commercial fleets would use the site reducing the overall cost of fuel and improving convenience.

Fuel inventory and billing was managed with the Key Lock system. Each fleet using a site was issued their own key. That key would turn on the pump, but would run the gallon transactions through a distinct totalizer. At the end of a week or month the company selling the diesel would take down the totalizer number and bill each individual firm for their share of fuel. The pictures below show an old school Key Lock system. Notice the side where there is a stack of different totalizers next to a key point. That’s how it worked prior to today’s modern cardlock systems. Easy and secure in analog time.