Can I make Diesel fuel out of Kerosene and Motor Oil?

Why would you want to burn expensive Kero when cheeper Diesel is all you need. In my part of the contry it's almost double the cost.

I've heard of a number of people burning No 2 fuel oil but that just makes the engine start harder. No 2 and Diesel are very simular and some suppliers are even delivering Diesel to homes in place of No 2 - the red stuff

I've also heard of people using Kero in the winter because it startes easier - heard it burns hotter also.

I've got to believe that as you move away from Diesel towards a Kero blend or No 2 bend it's tougher on the engine.

my 2 cents

Crude oil is a mixture hydrogens and carbons. The various molecules have longer or shorter chains of Carbon atoms. When you "crack", distill or refine crude, various molecule come off at different temps depending on the number of C atoms they have. A chain with just one carbon atom in it (CH4) is the lightest chain, known as methane. The first four chains -- CH4 (methane), C2H6 (ethane), C3H8 (propane) and C4H10 (butane) -- are all gases. Next comes the liquid forms, Pentane has five, hexane has six (these molecules are called napthas -- you might have an example of them called paint thinner). With 7 C's, Heptane, you get into liquid gasoline. Next an eighth one called Octane!

Pump gas is a mixture of chains with 7 to 11 C atoms per molecule. They stared with Heptane. It made a good bang, but exploded very easily when compressed. So they added some C8, Octane (hept for 7, oct for 8. Latin) and the resulting blend gasoline became easily usable in an engine when compressed (that is, it didn't explode when you didn't want it to). So, basically an 87 octane gas got its rating because it has 87 per cent of the Octane molecule and 13 per cent of the Heptane, C7 molecule (or some blend of C7 to 11 chains with the same properties when compressed).

Next is kerosene in the C12 to C15 range, followed by diesel fuel at C16 and heavier fuel oils like No. 2 at about C17. Next come the lubricating oils at C18. The C18 molecules no longer vaporize in any way at normal temperatures.

The chains up through C18H32 or so are all liquids at room temperature. Chains above C19 are all solids at room temperature.

So the question gets to be can you mix a C18 with a C12 or a C13 to duplicate the qualities of C16? Hmmm. Well, C18 doesn't vaporize well. That's a problem. Next is the kerosene mostly C12, or C13, or C14, or C15? Dunno. Is the ambient temp like Alaska, or are we in Duane's state of Pennsylvania where it was about 80 today. Does Duane's "yesterday's tractor" have an electronic control module on it to sense surge, detonation, temp, etc. and inject the proper mixture to compensate? Probably not... we are on yesterday's tractors - not today's tractors - after all; and we can guess Duane is probably not talking about his '92 Chevy truck with three microprocessors in the ECM black box. We do know that engines and people get upset about the difference betwen C7, and C8. And we do know that there are now variables of temperature which don't call for a C11 to a C15 that we'd might use when it's cold outside -- which 80 degrees isn't. Given what we do know versus what we don't know, I still think it's safer to say no, probably not the best idea you ever had, Duane. Maybe wait 'til it's the dead of winter, then burn 13 parts C14 to 85 parts C16, and leave the C18 out of the equation altogether, or at least until it's 100 outside and you have an ECM that knows what to do with it, and a pump / injector set up that won't get trashed by it.

By the way, Cetane rating comes from cetane, which is identified chemically as n-hexadecane (hexadec meaning 16), and by definition of the rating system that sprung up, is rated at 100. Added to it is heptamethyl nonane, a highly refined branch paraffin with an assigned cetane of 15. The compression ratio of the engine is varied to produce the same ignition delay period for the test fuel as the two reference blends of higher and lower quality. Like octane, just stand the scale on its head.

Steve

Most people have never been exposed to the situations that you describe, so are afraid to even think about it, let alone try it.

I have seen farmers here burn kero in their diesel tractors all my life with no adverse effects other than slightly less power. I even know a couple 'newage' farmers that are 'cracking' their own 'diesel' from everything from old fry-o-lator grease to rape seed oil.

Here in the cold Northeast, the people in the know that have Kero heaters will run 'Non-Taxable Red Diesel' as it is way cheaper than Kero. I burn the red stuff in everything from my Monitor heater to my 'Kero' lamps, lanterns and wick heaters, with no more trouble than a tad more sooting. I have to laugh every time I see someone filling a 5 gallon Kerosun can at the Kero pump and paying through the nose...

I agree with Jim. It doesn't make sense.

Tractors made to run on kerosene have 4 or 5 to 1 compression ratios. Your Diesel runs something like a 20:1 compression ratio. Kerosene has very low octane, Diesel fuel very high octane -- that is, fuel is hard to ignite while kerosene is volatile stuff.

Mixing the stuff with oil to raise the octane is probably a black art that shouldn't try without some kind of chemistry degree under your belt.

So unless you really want to see your motor act like a hand grenade I wouldn't do it. Go buy some M-180's and set them off in the field. The bang may be about the same, it's a lot cheaper, and you won't have to clean up all the shrapnel afterwards. Seeing if you can trade the kerosene you have to some guy who runs an all fuel tractor and is willing to pump you some heating oil from his furnace in return would be my druthers.

Steve

• read this?

But I have seen it happen in reality. Low octane gas in about a 11:1 compression ratio gas engine on an oval track. Preigntion cracked the head, warped then broke the OHC, valves got loose and shrapnel themselves. Opened up the water jacket and instant steam bath behind the car. No flame, not as spectacular as your movie. Guy was garaged next to me, and he'd flushed about a $5,000 engine because of trying to save some bucks and using octane booster instead of ponying up the money for high octane gas. Pretty stupid.
Not pretty to look at either.

Actually! I remember seeing a more spectacular version. Fuel dragster. Too much need for speed -- too rich on the nitromethane (and these were guys who'd been brewing that stuff for a lot of years). Head came right off the engine. Mucho flames! Spectacular to see it happen -- sad to see all those expensive engine parts turn to junk.

Steve

Octane has NOTHING to do with a diesel engine.

Here are some facts:

The energy content of petroleum fuels: No.1, No. 2 and gasoline is fairly constant per unit of mass. The density of these fuels differs greatly however. Therefore it is easier to keep less dense gasoline in suspension with air than it is kerosene. The reason for intake manifold heating on all fuel tractors is that the greater density of kerosene means a greater propensity to condense - or fall out of suspension with air - in the manifold. Heat raises its effective "dew point" as do vortex or "swirl" generators in the passage and on the intake valve. Don't take my word for it, read the discussion of fuels from Oak Ridge National Labs -- >Link

Fact:>Link All fuel - kerosene burning - tractors have lower compression ratios than gas tractors. See any spec listing. If kerosene isn't more volatile - that is, has a greater propensity to burn more rapidly - than gasoline then were the tractor designers stupid, or did they know something about the relative octane or cetane properties of gasoline versus kerosene?

Fact: Kerosene and Diesel are rated in cetane. Gas is rated in octane. Cetane rating is a measure of combustion speed characteristics of a fuel in a compression ignition engine. Octane is a measure of the combustion speed characteristics of fuel in a spark ignition engine. Two different words. Two different scales. Exactly the same concept. To say octane has NOTHING to do with the idea is equivalent to saying that 40 degrees Centigrade doesn't mean it's hot outside.

Fact: The delay between the time the fuel is injected into a Diesel cylinder and ignition is expressed as a cetane number. Usually, this is between 30 and 60. Fuels that ignite rapidly have high cetane ratings, while slow-to-ignite fuels have lower cetane ratings (sounds a lot like the octane idea, yes?). The lower the temperature of the ambient air, the greater the need for a fuel with a higher cetane number.

Fact: Diesel fuel has a cetane rating of about 40. Most kerosene ranges towards the 50 - 60 end of the scale. They are very different. Ether, with a very high cetane rating of 85-96, is often used for starting diesel engines in cold weather. If the volatility of the fuel makes little difference -- mix in some ether as well? No, because:

Fact: any fuel that ignites before or after it should in any engine -- gas or Diesel -- can damage the engine. Preignition or detonation -- pistons don't like to be pushed when they're not ready for it.

So the original question was mixing kerosene with motor oil. I still say don't do it. I'd tell you not to use 80 octane gas mixed with 104 octane booster in a 10.5:1 gas engine as well because I've seen it shrapnel an expensive engine. Getting stuff blended right before it goes in the tank isn't easy. Multi weight oil with expanding polymers or even single weight oil is even more difficult to blend with a less dense fluid like kerosene. Mixing kerosene with No. 2 in cold weather -- OK. Do it varying ratios depending on the temperature -- but No. 2 is a lot more similar to kerosene in terms of density than motor oil.

Here's one last fact: I've been around long enough and seen enough engines explode to err on the side of caution at times and not to advise somebody to put some witch's brew in their engine and hope for the best -- the worst being a few thousand dollars out the window to save a few cents on fuel.

Steve

Yup. Duane is gonna run into a fine mess when he comes back and reads all this.

The flash point of gasoline is 40 degrees below zero. None of us should ever go near it. Flash point involves introducing a flame or spark to ignite a liquid. The flash point of Jet A kerosene, a C12 and C13 fuel, gets down to 29 degrees (wouldn't want your airplane at 40,000 feet not igniting fuel, would you?) which is still colder than most summer days in the field. (A Cal Tech guy wrote a lengthy paper about this stuff, it's at caltech.edu)

Maybe the term autoignition - or that temperature at which a fuel will spontaneously ignite without an external ignition source like a flame or spark is more useful here. It's about 495 F for pump gas, about 519F for Jet A kerosene C12H26 and about 600F for C16H36 - Diesel fuel.

The fewer Carbon molecules in a fuel, the lighter it is and the faster it evaporates (mixes with air) or vaporizes - volatility. Of the liquid fuels, Gas is lightest, followed by kerosene, followed by Diesel. And motor oil is heavier than any of them. That's why you can run gas and kero thru a carb, but Diesel needs to be injected. We were comparing Diesel to Kero to motor oil -- so I'm stickin' by my story.

you have a good day.

Steve

(I am not really sure about the actual chemestry of kerosene, diesel and motor oil, so my "illustrations" are really guesses, but I think my concept is sound)

Finally, if your diesel engine will run on your mixture, it is also likely that it might also run on straight kerosen or even straight motor oil! Why would you want to abuse your engine with this sort of experiment?