Ask the Experts: What’s the dirtiest fuel you’ve come across?

What’s the worst fuel you’ve come across?

“Well quite recently actually, despite the many years doing this, it was in the last few months. We went to a datacentre and we took a sample from the bulk 30,000 litre fuel tank. I’ve actually got a sample with me and this is what we found.”

“The tank was contaminated with a lot of water. As you can see in this phase there’s water there, the fuel water interface and then a fuel phase as well.”

“The tank clearly needed cleaning using our ClearTank service. So we went back setup our equipment and we recirculated the fuel within the tank so many times so that we took the water out with our series of filters. After we’d done that so many hours later we ended up with clean fuel.”

“You can see the difference between when we start before we recirculated the fuel so many times and then you end up with clean fuel”

What would’ve happened had they used the dirty fuel?

“If the water had got into the fuel lines first, then into the back generators then it would get into the injectors causing rust within the engine components because water and metal don’t mix. Also the lubricity of the diesel is lost. It would be like grinding something together without WD40 and wouldn’t work very well, that’s what diesel does so water in diesel is not great.”