#2 fuel oil quality

pedmec · January 26

Good morning guys, I hope your not buried in what looks like 2" of snow like I am. I do have a question though regarding #2 fuel oil. Keep in mind that I do almost 100% gas but there was a time long ago that I did get my oil burner license and started to play with burners.

One of my younger techs who came from a oil burner service company stated that there is no difference in the quality of the fuel and that its always coming from the same source. Yet when I read here some say the quality might be bad and that is causing the burner problems.

Can anybody say with clarity if oil from different suppliers are of different quality? I know we have a lot of oil guys here.

yellowdog · January 26

When i was out in service, Irving customers had the worst looking filters strainers and nozzles. Always almost black looking. Irving ships their own oil direct to their own bulk plants from their own refinery. All other local dealers get their oil from the racks in Albany in one way or another. Those customers had nice pink filters and clean strainers. So, I definitely saw a difference in oil from various suppliers.

Intplm. · January 26

That #2 fuel oil can lose its "quality" when it is delivered into its home owners rusty sludge laden tank. Most often what comes from the terminal is pretty good stuff.

EdTheHeaterMan · January 26

In 1968ish the F P Young company started adding a chemical they purchased from a company in New England called APC 30. It was one part of a program they purchased from Henry Blanchard, or a company Henry worked for or operated that promoted clean burning oil heat. I remember that Henry preached that oil can burn clean (even before Flame Retention oil burners) and you needed to start with clean oil in the tank. The APC 30 was a magical chemical that cleaned the tank just by delivering it to the tank in each oil fill up. That is how I remember it. I also remember that you could do an oil burner tune up and vacuum cleaning in a white work shirt. Well that may not have been the best idea but it worked on all the regular customers. (Not so much on customers from other oil suppliers that switched to FP Young).

So some fuel has additives based on where you purchase the fuel. I remember driving the oil truck and when I needed to load at a different bulk plant I would need to add a one gallon container (in reusable metal cans) of APC 30 to the truck before filling up the truck.

There was one down side to this. For the first two years we could expect an increase in very dirty oil filters and an occasional plugged nozzle as the chemical scrubbed the dirt from the homeowner's oil tank. That was before I started burner service work. By the time 1975 rolled around, all the FP Young co. customers' fuel tanks were so clean that plugged filters, strainers, and nozzles were a thing of the past.

My friend and oil company owner from Cape May always sold fuel from Atlantic Richfield, then it became ARCO. That fuel had a good quality additive and when Atlantic stopped selling to him directly and he purchased form the open market, He was able to use the additive to keep his customers fuel quality up the the standards his grandfather sold for over 50 years.

When he purchased a competitor;s fuel deliver business he found that their customers tanks were so dirty that they had a policy of calling most of the automatic delivery accounts to ask them to shut off the burner switch because the delivery would always stir up the sludge and cause a no heat call for the next day from a plugged filter or nozzle.

They also had a policy of lifting top feed fuel lines a few inches higher from the bottom to avoid the tank bottom sludge. This plays havoc with automatic delivery accounts with 275 gallon fuel tanks that run empty with 7” of fuel still in the bottom. According to the degree day calculation there was still enough in the tank for a delivery that was scheduled for tomorrow. The started to tell the degree day calculator that the tanks were 225 gallon capacity in order to prevent “out of oil” emergency deliveries. I needed to carry 10 gallons of fuel oil on my service truck for that reason.

There I go rambling on about old times.

I guess I could have just said YES there is a difference, but it all comes from the same place. What you add to the fuel makes the difference. … but that would just be boring

Mr. Ed

EBEBRATT-Ed · January 26

In most location for instance in Springfield, MA where I am the oil comes to Springfield on a pipeline from New Haven, Ct.

All the dealers pick it up at one of 3 or 4 loading racks in the city. All the oil is the same regardless of which rack it comes from.

In this day and age I think oil treatment is a good idea.

hot_rod · January 26

I've seen comments that certain biofuels blends are causing issues, dissolving old sludge or something?

pedmec · January 26

So it's safe to say that if the oil guys are referring to poor oil quality as an issue with the system it must start at the point of delivery, the oil tank? because I have seen some techs mention poor oil quality.

Intplm. · January 26

Are they referring to before delivery or home tank storage?

pedmec · January 26

judging by the comments, the home tank. Unless your telling me the truck tanks are an issue. that's why I'm asking

Steamhead · January 26

ISTR fuel quality was one reason burner makers started using higher pump pressures. The higher pressure produces smaller oil droplets, which burn cleaner since more of the oil's surface is exposed to the air.

pedmec · January 26

@Steamhead I know that. what I'm trying to say is if the issue with your burner is oil quality but yet everybody is buying oil basically from the same source then where are we losing the oil quality?

jesmed1 · January 26

We got 2 new 275 gallon Granby tanks in 2019, to replace similar old tanks that had a date stamp that said they were from 1960, so about 60 years old, if I recall. I've been here almost 20 years now, and I started using FFPF 4-in-1 Heating Oil Treatment (HOT) regularly about 10 years ago. I think we did have one time where the filter or nozzle clogged and the boiler wouldn't run. Probably like @EdTheHeaterMan said, the HOT started breaking down the sludge and after a few years it gunked things up enough that the oil stopped flowing. I didn't get a peek inside the old tanks when they were removed a few years later, but I would have been curious to see what the insides looked like.

Now that we have new tanks, I use HOT religiously to prevent future sludging. There are a number of different additives on the market, and I was curious to compare ingredients to find which is "best." HOT seems to be the most expensive, and from my limited research, I think it's because it has a high percentage (30%-60%) of dipropylene glycol methyl ether (DPGME), which apparently is a 100% water-soluble solvent used in a wide variety of water-containing emulsions like latex coatings and cleaning agents. Presumably that's what makes HOt so good at removing water. HOT is significantly more expensive than other treatments that don't contain DPGME and seem to be mainly petroleum derivatives and which may not be as effective at removing water (I don't really know). But I'm willing to spend the few extra bucks for HOT on the theory that the DPGME is the magic ingredient, and I've seen posts by some pros here at HH who use and recommend it.

Intplm. · 2:54PM

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1884293#Comment_1884293

If we are looking at oil quality then it's more often coming from the personal tank storage where the so called quality might be compromised. This is just one reason why its a good idea to work with an oil delivery company that also services there customers heating systems.

To my knowledge there is no epidemic of poor quality #2 fuel oil being delivered to homes. Oil more often becomes an issue when it is sitting in a home owners oil tank.