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The task of diesel fuel purification arises at the stage of its production, when it is necessary to get rid of water and solid impurities. Upon completion of the production process, the risk of contamination pursues diesel fuel from the refinery to the storage containers of the equipment in which it is applied. Water has a negative impact on the quality characteristics of diesel fuel, especially being in an emulsified state.
Speaking about refineries, it is worth noting that diesel fuel is purified there using conventional methods of destabilization of emulsions, which include centrifugal, gravity, electrical and chemical approaches, as well as filtering through special membranes. Ultrasound and magnetic field impact on diesel fuel is also used, but much less.
Settling can be used only as a preliminary treatment stage, since it does not allow to remove minor impurities and get rid of water completely. In this regard, centrifugal separators are more promising, but their use is characterized by high energy costs, and the equipment itself is expensive. In addition, adjustment and maintenance of separators is complex and labor-intensive.
When removing solids, conventional fibrous filters show good efficacy, but they are not able to ensure complete removal of water.
In recent years, there are more and more coalescing filters, which are good at water separation. However, these devices do not show adequate efficacy at presence of large amount of impurities in diesel fuel. Furthermore, they are prone to rapid clogging and are very difficult to regenerate.
If a small amount of water must be removed, it is possible to apply the method of spray drying under vacuum. The essence of this approach is as follows. First of all, the contaminated fuel is sprayed through a nozzle into a tank where vacuum is created. This allows removing free and dissolved moisture from the oil product, as well as dissolved air. After dehydration, the fuel is deposited on the bottom of the vacuum tank in the form of droplets. The speed and effectiveness of the process depend on the temperature and rise at its increase. In general, vacuum systems are more reliable and powerful than separators. However, they are not without drawbacks. Vacuum treatment does not allow to get rid of solids and has low performance (usually no more than 0.5 tons/hour).
Dehydration of oil products may also be carried out by quicklime. Moistened diesel fuel is fed into an adsorber filled with quicklime, at a relatively low rate, at 18-20ºC. For dehydration, you will need the amount of quicklime which makes up to 0.2% of the feedstock volume. Flakes, formed as a byproduct of this oil purification, are separated from fuel by means of settling or oil filtration. The disadvantage of this method is that quicklime is not suitable for use with some types of fuel, and it is necessary to perform a preliminary check of compatibility in a lab environment. To date, the use of quicklime for diesel fuel purification is not sufficiently studied.
Synthetic zeolites can also be used for dehydration of fuels. Sometimes they are referred to as molecular sieves. They absorb water from fuel, which is then removed from the sorbent by heating. The main difficulty is the selection of the optimum temperature, as overheating can result in a breach of the zeolite structure, which hinders its further use.
Dehydration with zeolites will cost several times cheaper than operation of a centrifugal separator.
It is obvious that an optimum solution of the task of diesel fuel purification of water and mechanical impurity is possible only by combination of various methods. This makes it possible to achieve the best performance of the process in terms of energy efficiency, productivity and cost.
This is the approach used in UVR-type plants manufactured by GlobeCore. They allow to perform purification, clarification and restoration of absolutely all light fractions of petroleum products (diesel fuel, gasoline, kerosene, heating oil, as well as different types of oil).
During diesel fuels cleaning process, the UVR-type plant removes water, mechanical impurities and hydrogen sulfide compounds, reduces the concentration of sulfur, lowers paraffins content and removes unsaturated hydrocarbons. After processing by GlobeCore equipment, diesel fuel does not oxidize or darken again.
The UVR-type plants have the following advantages:
Diesel fuel as well as other fuels is not ideal, therefore, it has both its advantages and disadvantages. Before you buy one petroleum product or another, getting to know with its string and weak points is a good idea. This will help you make the fullest use of its advantages and reduce the effects of its drawbacks. So, let’s begin.
For a long time the basic value of diesel fuel was in its price, which used to be lower than that of gasoline. It was especially advantageous for fleets to acquire such fuel due to the bulk volumes of use, which helped to make tremendous savings. But by this day the price of diesel fuel has increased slightly, which makes us look for its other benefits.
Diesel fuel emits such harmful substances as nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon black (soot). But their number less than other fuels. Therefore, there is some cost saving on a variety of environmental charges and fees. Another feature of diesel fuel is its safety. Diesel engines are designed so that high flammability limit of the oil product can be maintained. That is why diesel fuel is preferred when fuelling military combat vehicles, battle tanks in particular.
Due to the high efficiency of diesel fuel it is quite economical, so regardless of the type of transport, in which it is used, the number of additional refills is minimal.
Having good lubricating properties, diesel fuel has a positive effect on moving parts of engines, increasing their reliability and extending engine lifetime.
Speaking about the disadvantages, they are caused mainly by the chemical composition of diesel fuel. So, one of the problems is increasing oil viscosity at low temperatures. At minus twenty degrees Celsius it is getting hard to pump the fuel and ignition problems occur. But it is no longer critical, as we already have solutions that allow the use diesel fuel even in arctic climate.
Cheap and low-quality fuel grades have a lot of substances with poor combustibility, which results in their deposition on the surfaces of engine components, and the corrosion of such surfaces.
Also it should be noted that diesel engines typically produce more noise during operation than gasoline ones. And the smell of burnt diesel fuel is rather unpleasant.
During storage, diesel fuel can be oxidized, become contaminated with harmful impurities and darken. This complicates its use in automobile engines, so this fuel should be subjected to a specific treatment in order to restore its original properties.
To solve this problem GlobeCore company has developed and manufactures UVR plants. They allow cleaning and brightening of diesel fuel, as well as removing aromatics mercaptans, hydrogen sulfide, and some sulfur.
GlobeCore processes provide an economical solution to the problem of contaminated diesel fuel, which allows full restoration of its properties and ensures a long and reliable service life of engines and fuel systems.
Very often people do not distinguish between the terms “diesel fuel” and “heating fuel”, considering them to be identical. But is it really so? Let’s try to understand. We offer three criteria for comparison: consumer, economic and industrial.
In terms of consumption, there is a fundamental difference between heating fuel and diesel fuel. Heating oil is typically used for independent heating of private houses, as well as a heat carrier for household and industrial furnaces. Perhaps this is the only area of application for such fuel. Therefore it is hard to escape the obvious conclusion that the range of use of heating fuel is narrower than diesel fuel.
Regarding heating fuel production, diesel oil cut of straight-run distillation must be used to obtain it. The fractional composition of freshly obtained heating fuel is somewhat heavier and it has high viscosity. In the process of its production there are no strict limitations for some indicators: cetane number and iodine number, as well as its cloud point. At the same time, the values of all important parameters of diesel fuel are always standardized by the current standards of the fuel and energy sector. Therefore, their production requires “finer” tuning of equipment used for distillation of petroleum products.
Well, this is where we smoothly approach the price issue. The average difference in furnace fuel and diesel fuel price is about 30-40%. Diesel oil is more expensive mainly because of the wider field of application. Often the question arises: Can diesel fuel be used instead of furnace fuel and vice versa? Theoretically it is possible, but it all depends on how you are going to use this oil product. Each application has its own peculiarities that must be considered.
It should be noted that the similarity of furnace fuel and diesel fuel is often used by dishonest dealers. Indeed, some types of diesel engines may be operated with furnace fuel, but this does not mean that it can fully replace diesel fuel. In order to avoid sales of cheaper product posing as more expensive one, furnace fuel is supplemented with special red dyes and chemicals (furfural and diphenylamine) which make it easy to distinguish furnace fuel from diesel fuel, intended for use in respective engines.
Another pressing question: Is it possible to improve the quality of heating and diesel fuel? The answer is a definite “yes”. Very often, during long-term storage, oil can oxidize due to contact with atmospheric oxygen. Contamination can also accumulate in the oil. This changes the natural color of the fuel, which draws attention of the buyer in the first place. Application of GlobeCore UVR plants allows for clarification of furnace and diesel fuel, as well as removal of aromatics, water and solids that are extrinsic for this class of petroleum products. The process of purification with this plant allows removal of hydrogen sulfide compounds, reduction of sulfur concentration, lowering of wax content, removal of unsaturated hydrocarbons. After processing with GlobeCore equipment, the fuel does not oxidize nor darken again.
In practice, diesel fuel purification takes two consistently implemented steps: adsorption and regeneration of spent sorbent.
The effectiveness of adsorption process is determined by operating characteristics of the processed sorbent. Let us consider a detailed list of substances that are used when working with diesel fuel.
Activated charcoal. Activated charcoal is a non-polar substance. The adsorption on its surface occurs due to the dispersive intermolecular interactions. The efficiency of adsorption depends on the degree of surface development. There are cases of modifying of activated charcoal in order to increase oxygenate groups concentration on the surface, improve adsorption activity, etc.
Zeolites. Zeolites are materials with unique adsorptive properties due to the peculiarities of their composition and structure. Chemically, zeolites are minerals, aqueous sodium and calcium aluminosilicates of skeletal silicates subclass.
Mesoporous materials. Mesoporous adsorbents include silica gel, active alumina, aluminosilicates and their modifications. The most common additive is nickel in its metallic form.
We should note that the majority of adsorbents must go through surface activation process before use. This process involves calcination of the adsorbent at a temperature of 500-600 °C. This is necessary to get rid of moisture and gases adsorbed by the surface from the air.
The specific choice of sorbent is dependent on the initial state of oil that requires purification.
The principle of sorbent purification of diesel fuel is implemented in GlobeCore UVR type plants. This equipment is used for purification and decoloration of dark diesel and heating fuel, for removal of sulfur and hydrogen sulfide compounds, clarification of gas condensate by removing tar and dirt. After purification, the quality of oil products corresponds to the existing standards and the highest grade of purity.
Probably all vehicle owners heard at least once in their life that sulfur has a negative impact on diesel fuel. But if you ask what exactly is this impact, not all of them will know the answer. So, why is sulfur so harmful?
First of all, it promotes fuel oxidation causing environmental pollution with exhaust gases. But the effect of sulfur on diesel fuel does not only bring negative consequences. It improves the lubricating properties of this oil product, thereby reducing wear of engine structural parts. Therefore, when choosing fuel, it is advisable to find a “middle ground”, which on the one hand would provide sufficient lubricity, and on the other hand would minimize environmental damage. Experts recommend buying fuel with a sulfur content of 0.15 to 1.5%.
In our time the refining industry mainly uses physico-chemical and chemical methods of desulfurization of diesel fuels. A chemical approach involves the use of hydrotreating and purification with sulfuric acid and physico-chemical method involves absorption and adsorption purification.
Sulfuric acid cleaning is performed by mixing the processed diesel fuel with 90-93% solution of sulfuric acid at ambient temperature. After all chemical reactions are complete, purified oil and acid sludge are obtained. The latter contains all the undesirable impurities. Theoretically, it can be used for production of sulfuric acid. In general, sulfuric acid treatment is quite complex and requires bulky equipment.
Hydrotreating is the most common method for removing sulfur from diesel fuel as of today. This process is very expensive. The cost of hydrotreating units depends on the performance and the required depth of processing, and in theory it can reach millions of US dollars.
The essence of this approach is based on the interaction of hydrogen with diesel fuel in the presence of specific substances, catalysts. As a result of chemical reactions between hydrogen and sulfur, nitrogen and oxygen compounds, we get hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and water, respectively. This method also has its disadvantages, which manifest themselves in the form of high temperature (380-420ºC) and pressure (up to 4 MPa) of the process, as well as hardware design complexity.
But in the present conditions, the biggest drawback is perhaps a great anthropogenic impact on the ecological system due to emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere and waste water. To neutralize the emissions caused by hydrotreating of petroleum products, additional financial and material expenses are required.
Adsorption treatment is implemented by diesel fuel contact with special adsorbents, which can be bleaching clay or silica gel. They absorb oxygenated, sulfur and nitrogen compounds as well as other substances, which need to be removed (for example, resin).
Absorption treatment involves selective removal of harmful components of diesel fuel. Furfural, sulphovin, nitrobenzene are used as solvents. The disadvantage of this approach is the inability to recover the used solvent and, as a result, its total loss causing increased financial costs.
GlobeCore offers eco-friendly technology that allows to remove hydrogen sulfide compounds and to lower sulfur content in diesel fuels. It is implemented in UVR-type plants, which are also capable of lowering wax content and removing unsaturated hydrocarbons from oil products. After purification by GlobeCore plants, diesel fuel again becomes marketable, does not re-oxidize and does not darken.
UVR plants have the following advantages:
The main industry where heating oil is used is heating services. This oil product is most often operated in stationary steam boilers and industrial furnaces.
Typically, heating oil is burned in low-capacity residential heating systems. It also can be used in heat generators of average capacity operated in agriculture for the purpose of drying grain, fruit, fodder preparation, etc.
The main feature of heating oil is the absence of standardization of iodine and cetane numbers, as well as its cloud point. When comparing diesel fuel and heating oil, it can be seen that the production of heating oil is cheaper, and it does not meet environmental requirements that have to be met by diesel fuel.
The difference in price is very often used by unscrupulous businessmen who sell heating oil under the guise of diesel oil. If you don’t call out such a seller on this trick, you can get unpleasant consequences in the form of costly repairs of fuel equipment. Poor-quality fuel disables the high-pressure pump and injectors in the first place.
In order not to take the bait of fraudsters you must keep the following in mind:
Fuel purity is one of the most important factors in reliable and prices operation of various counters and flow meters, fuelling systems, engines etc.
During transportation and storage, diesel fuel may accumulate various contaminants: solid particles, paraffin, water, rust. These can damage fuel systems causing serious failures.
Modern fuel lines are equipped with special filters, which protect the mechanism from large and small solid particles. Filters are used in small filling station, oil refineries and fuel depots, which store large amounts of unpurified fuel in tanks.
If the tanks designed for oil product storage are not maintained right, fuel may be contaminated by products of corrosion and other contaminants. Below are the main characteristics of filters for diesel fuel. This information may be of use for selection of filtration device among the products available in the market.
In the general case, fuel filters may have two to four filtration stages.
Coarse filters remove only the larges particles, about 100 micron in size. Such particles can be seen with the naked eye. Fine filters remove smaller particles, 15 to 50 micron in size. These particles are quite hazardous to the engine and the fuel system.
Beside solid particles, engine operation is also influenced by water in the fuel. In the worst case, it will cause failure of the high pressure pump and nozzles. To prevent this, separator filters are used, which remove water from the diesel fuel. Such devices are usually installed before coarse and fine filters.
The principle of separator operation is based on separation of water and hydrocarbons by density difference. Centrifugal forces cause the heavier water to flow down the walls of a vessel and into the drain.
Current separator designs can remove up to 93% water from the processed diesel fuel. These devices can also remove solid particles and contaminants from the fuel.
A mobile separation device can be used by small filing stations. Such device can quickly remove water from diesel fuel, gasoline, oil and kerosene.
A model with additional filtration capability of 1, 5, 10 and 25 micron can also be selected.
For transportation fleets and farmers with daily use of 4000 liters of diesel fuel or less, a UVR-450/6 unit by GlobeCore can work quite well. This machine removes hydrogen sulfide, reduces sulfur and paraffin, as well as unsaturated hydrocarbons. After processing in the UVR machine, diesel fuel is highly stable to oxidation and darkening.
Beside restoration of diesel fuel to market quality, the equipment enjoys other advantages as well:
High purification quality is assured by using special sorbent and filters.
GlobeCore specialists regularly participate and organize seminars and presentations in various countries.
August 10-12, GlobeCore’s technical support manager Frank May visited Harare (Zimbabwe), where he made a presentation of GlobeCore equipment.
During the presentation on the reasons for deterioration of insulating oil and the failures of the power transformers, GlobeCore showed its oil purification and regeneration equipment already well known in the world market, as well as its recent developments.
The presentation showed the prospects for the use of GlobeCore equipment in Zimbabwe’s electricity industry and reached a preliminary agreement on cooperation.
We thank the Zimbabwean colleagues for their sincere interest and assistance in organizing presentations.
Contamination of diesel fuel by solid particles or water is most often the effect of long storage in tanks, transportation and pumping. In some cases, oil products can be contaminated by microbes.
To evaluate the presence of, for example, water in the fuel, imagine how the engine will look after running on abrasive mixture supplied at high pressure.
It would seem that the problem may be solved at the fuel production stage, but even the best fuel can be contaminated while being transported to the consumer, due to oil piping, pumps and valves.
Contaminated diesel fuel can damage some of the highly precise parts of the engine, such as nozzles etc. The most sensitive is the equipment with several mixron openings. These become clogged fairly quickly even with relatively low level of fuel contamination. Important parts of the engine and the fuel system break down, and require expensive repairs.
To save money, improve reliability and extend life of the equipment, diesel fuel should be purified additionally at the location near the consumers.
GlobeCore suggests highly efficient solutions to improve the quality of the oil products before use. The UVR type units allow to remove hydrogen sulfur, sulfur, paraffin and unsaturated hydrocarbon from the fuel. After this treatment the fuel is does not oxidize and darken.
The equipment has the following advantages:
Using the GlobeCore processes to purify and clarify diesel fuel allows preventing engine and fuel system damage, eliminating down time and expensive repairs.