The most common contaminants in diesel fuel are products of corrosion of storage tanks and pipelines, water, particulate matter and oxidation products. These substances can also form insoluble compounds.
One of the most important parameters of diesel fuel purity is the absence of water. Hydrocarbons are by nature hygroscopic. Water enters the material and can remain there either as free water or in the form of emulsion. To increase reliability of fuel systems, this emulsified water must be removed. When fuel passes through the pumps, free water is broken into small droplets. If fuel temperature drops, solved water precipitates and emulsion is formed. Fuel at a filling station may accumulate contaminants including surfactants. They form fine emulsions, which are very difficult to settle out and pass through precision parts of fuel systems even through filters.
At present, free water can be removed from oil products using physical, chemical and their combination.
Porous sheets, organic or non-organic materials, metal mesh, special paper, metal-ceramic or porous ceramic materials can all be used as filter media.
However, as was mentioned above, not all contaminants can be filtered out. Thorough purification of diesel fuel requires special equipment.
Globecore has developed and manufactures UVR units for removal of water, particulate matter, products of oxidation and some paraffins and sulfur from diesel fuel.
The equipment operates on the principle of vacuum micronfiltration and absorption.
Depending on the processing capacity of the specific UVR model, these units can be helpful to small farms and large facilities with truck fleets.
This model features some important advantages, making it stand out:
- versatility. The UVR can regenerate, lighten, filter and purify not only diesel fuel, but also mineral oils, HFO, gas condensat etc;
- the unit can operate in manual or semi-automatic mode. This helps to reduce labor costs, since operator presence is only required for start, stop and sorbent replacement;
- energy efficiency. Actual power consumption when purifying diesel fuel is no more than 3 kW/h;
- the unit does not require complex manipulations when switching to a different processed media;
- the plant ensures full compliance of the output product with the existing standards and regulations.