I chatted with a fuel trucker the other day and he recommended using kerosene as an additive to my diesel fuel, He says that kerosene is a more refined form of diesel fuel much like jet fuel is a more refined form of diesel fuel......... He suggested that you can actually run your PSD on pure kerosene oil for a much better engine performance and lower exhaust emissions............ Im willing to try this if I can get more feed back on this subject. Has anyone else heard of this ?

 

It will burn kerosene, or jet fuel for that matter. Just plan on buying a set of injectors. Niether of those fuel have sufficient lubricity for a PSD injector, you would be better off just running a good fuel additive.

 

And your performance would be worse, not better. Kerosene has less energy (Btu) per gallon than #2 does.

Bad idea - don't do it!

 

DO NOT under any circumstances run a 1995 Power Stroke engine on kerosene! Kerosene does not have enough lubricity to keep your early style injectors from becoming galled internally. The 99.5 and newer engines have the tungsten carbide coating and would probably survive but I wouldn't recommend it.

I disagree that kerosene would lower your performance, however. We ran some engines on kerosene to test the new 6.0 injectors for scuffing and the engines had quite a bit more horse power on kerosene than on diesel fuel. I don't know what the BTU rating per gallon is between the two.

 

This site may explain it. Follow the links to "refining" they have a caloric / btu breakdown on fuels.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/diesel.htm

 

A diesel engine will run on just about anything you put in it, kerosene, peanut oil, vegetable oil, whatever. I have heard of truckers mixing gas, motor oil, and atf to get to the next truck stop. Be that as it may, diesel are built to burn DIESEL ! Why risk destroying your engine with something else?

 

That seems counterintuitive to me, Joe. Kerosene has around 1.5 - 2.0% less energy by volume than #2.

Not too long ago, I worked with large industrial burners (in the 100MMBtu range) that could be modified to burn different hydrocarbon fuels. Whenever we changed fuel type, the orifice size had to be changed in the burner nozzle - larger opening for lighter fuels, meaning more fuel to achieve a given operating temperature.

Given that there is more usable energy in #2, I don't know how an engine could make more power with Kerosene - assuming, of course, no other operating conditions are modified.

Unless I'm missing something, that is!

 

Thanks guys ......... it seems like the general opinion is dont use it in my PSD because it will mess up my injectors....... but what about a small amount as an additive for improved horsepower ??

 

Kerosene has it's set of intended uses, none of which are as an injector cleaner/cetane improver in a diesel engine. Stanadyne also has it's set of intended uses, among which are as an injector cleaner/cetane improver in a diesel engine. I think I'd use Stanadyne.
Wait a minute.....I do use Stanadyne.

 

Stanadyne performance formula is good stuff!

 

I have never used Stanadyne - you guys think it's that much better than Power Service?

 

How about milk??

 

Ive never used Power Service. Stanadyne has been around forever and has proven itself. When the temp drops below 10 degrees, Howes is also good.

 

http://www.stanadyne.com/dsg/dsg_dfa.asp

read about it here

 

I won't argue the point because I don't know how many BTU's are in a gallon of kerosene. I was told that we were running the engines on kerosene because, from a lubricity standpoint, that would be the worst case scenario of fuel that a customer would encounter, and we wanted to see what that would do to the injectors. Those engines had about 340 horse power at peak H/P and around 600 ft.lb. of torque at peak torque (maybe the fuel had something else in it as well). Then, when we switched back to regular diesel fuel the power and torque came back down to advertised levels. I don't really know what was in those tanks but I was told it was kerosene.