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A Description of Petroleum-based Fuels & Their Characteristics InspectAPedia®  -

• What are the Different Petroleum-based Fuels and What are their Characteristics?
• What are the differences between diesel fuel, home heating oil, kerosene, jet fuel, No. 2 heating oil, etc.?
• Are some of these petroleum based fuels interchangeable?

Here we describe the Different Petroleum-based Fuels and their Characteristics. This website answers most questions about all types of heating systems and gives important inspection, safety, and repair advice. Criticism and content suggestions are invited from heating service technicians, home inspectors, and home owners. ? Copyright 2009 Daniel Friedman, All Rights Reserved. Information Accuracy & Bias Pledge is at below-left. Use the links at page left to navigate this document or to go to Other Website Topics. Green links at left show where you are in our document & website.

Problems With Heating System Reliability When Heating Oil Additives are Used or Low-Level Oil Tanks are Filled

When we serviced and installed heating equipment we often recommended use of heating oil additives to remove small amounts of water or sludge in oil storage tanks, or to act as a pour point depressant for outdoor aboveground oil storage tanks. But while these are good products, things didn't always go well. We discuss the problem of sludge in heating oil tanks, lines, filters, and oil burner nozzles in more detail at Oil Tank Sludge Problems & Solutions

What are the Different Petroleum-based Fuels and What are their Characteristics?

The differences among these fuels, arranged in our list from "lightest" to "heaviest" are in the types of hydrocarbon chains that are distilled out of the crude oil during refining (and also that some of these fuels may contain other additives.

• Jet Fuel type A basically Kerosene, or filtered #1 oil cleaned up to higher specifications including very fine filtering (through diatomaceous earth) and a water removal step.
• Kerosene is #1 oil which has been filtered to clean it up. Sold at ridiculously higher prices in stores as "lamp oil" this material may have deodorants or fragrances added.
• #1 fuel oil is more refined than #2 oil, has a lower pour point (or gel point or waxing point), is less viscous, has a higher septane rating and contains fewer BTU's per gallon than #2 heating oil.
• Diesel fuel used in diesel powered vehicles and some other engines, is basically #2 home heating oil. But in the U.S. and other countries, home heating oil has dye added in order to distinguish it from un-taxed or lower-taxed fuels from un-dyed and higher-taxed diesel fuels used for over-the-road vehicles.
  
  Use of dye in diesel fuels: Un-taxed diesel is "dyed" and taxed diesel (that is, by a vehicle fuel tax) is not-dyed. In an emergency if you're out of home heating oil you can drive to the "gas" station to purchase diesel fuel (but you'll pay more since it's taxed). In the U.S. "red diesel" is used to identify high-sulfur diesel fuel for use in off-road equipment and machines. the I.R.S. requires a red dye in tax-exempt diesel fuel such as that used for home heating. Also in the U.S. blue die is added to diesel fuel used by government vehicles. In the U.K. "red diesel" is agricultural and other off-road vehicles and machines. In the E.U. a solvent yellow 124 dye is added to un-taxed fuels - it can be detected by an acid-test. Removing dye from diesel fuels is illegal.
  
  Does diesel fuel dye affect its performance? There have been questions raised about whether or not the use of marker dyes in diesel fuel affect its performance. To date we have not found analysis nor tests which confirm that there is a measurable effect on fuel atomization nor burn in home heating systems. A question about the effect of dyes on jet engines was raised in a New York Times article in 1997.
• Diesel fuel Winter Blend combines Diesel fuel with about 10% to 20% #1 oil to avoid waxing or gelling of the fuel. The septane rating of winter blend will usually be below regular diesel fuel unless a septane-booster additive has been included.
• Home Heating Oil inter Blend combines #2 heating oil with #1 oil (often called a "kerosene mix" by the heating oil distributor) for use at homes with outdoor oil tanks in freezing climates. Kerosene mix is usually 10 - 20% #1 with #2 similar to the Winter Blend Diesel described above.
• Home Heating Oil also referred to as #2 Fuel Oil or by some writers as Regular Fuel Oil. One gallon of No. 2 home heating oil will provide about 138,500 BTUs per gallon. How flammable is home heating oil?: it's not that easy to set on fire. If you were to toss a match into a bucket of No.2 home heating oil the match will just go out. (DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.) An oil burner uses a high voltage spark to ignite heating oil after the oil has been pressurized to 100 to 120 psi and then atomized by passing through the oil burner nozzle.
• #4 fuel oil (bunker oil) is used in large stationary engines, power plants, and very large commercial boilers
• RM oil is used as fuel by diesel locomotives and is a mix of #4 and #2 oils with some other refining differences
• #6 oil is used to make asphalt for paving

What this all means is that the heavier petroleum based fuels (higher numbers) have longer hydrocarbon chains than the lower number fuels, they have more BTUs per gallon, they will be more viscous (and often dirtier or will contain more contaminants including environment-polluting sulphur).

It is not helpful to order and burn Kerosene #1 over #2 fuel oil except in outdoor aboveground oil tanks in areas subject to temperatures below 16 degF.

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• From the following reference, edited: http://www.impalassforum.com/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=184909
• Thanks to an irate reader, James Ferguson, who suggested we correct and clarify which diesel fuels are dyed and which are not - January 2009.
• Also see Wikipedia definitions of use of dye in diesel fuels. Wikipedia lists the different colors of dye used in diesel fuels in various countries and applications.
• "Diesel Fuel Dye, Required by the I.R.S., Poses Risk to Jet Engines, Some Experts Say", Matthew L. Wald & Pamela K. Browne, New York Times, April 27, 1997 "The effects of the dye are not clear, but tests indicate that even minute amounts in engines can be heated into a tar like substance that clogs fuel nozzles in the engines. The contamination can be almost infinitesimal. Only 11 parts of dye per million parts of diesel fuel - the recipe required by the Internal Revenue Service - turn the fuel cherry red. But jet fuel is considered contaminated when it has even the slightest pinkish tinge instead of its normal color; somewhere between water and white wine" The article continues "The Boeing Company warned its customers in a letter last November that "the likelihood of a major airport shutdown because of red dye contamination in jet fuel is a serious concern for the aviation industry."
  

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