Fuel Oil Treatment

Fuel oil is used in Industries using heavy fuel driven machinery. It offers lubrication to machinery such as combustion engines, diesel engines on ships etc. Many a times inappropriate handling of fuel, different composition and oil burning equipment capacity results in accumulation of sludge. This in turn slows down the machinery producing less efficient results and more maintenance costs. To prevent all these, fuel oil treatment has become a necessity.

Heavy fuel oils produce more sludge with changed blending and refining processes of the machineries. This also changes the chemical and physical structure of the fuel oil    which makes it unstable. Clean fuel oil is a necessity for clean machinery mechanism. However, cleaning just the storage tank does not suffice since the sludge level has already risen to the suction pipe. This calls for constant process of cleaning the fuel oil so that sludge formation and accumulation is reduced and solids are dispersed.

Treatments such as pre-combustion conditioning, concentrated combustion improver, water in-oil emulsions for water removal from tanks and centrifuges, multi functional fuel treatment, soot removal, corrosion deposit removal etc are available in the market to help industries with smooth functioning of fuel injected machineries. Treatments with chemicals that offer to remove sludge must perform functions such as dissolving the sludge, stabilizing of the fuel to form additional sludge and diffuse already formed sludge into tiny particles for it to be combusted and burnt easily. Treatments such as emulsification of water to pass through the system easily are also an important feature. These chemicals need to have highly efficient active surface agents in order to work on machineries with small quantities.  In fact the surface activity criteria are an important feature to look for in fuel oil treatment chemicals.

Water and solid removal

Such treatments include specially formulated separators that remove unwanted accumulated solid and water in a much reliable and efficient way. These eliminate the chances of damage to the machinery such as pistons, cylinder liners etc even at the extreme moist sea conditions.

Soot and deposit removal

These treatments use compounds that are formulated to safely remove soot and deposits from machineries such as exhausts, boilers etc. The chemicals are available in both dry powder and liquid forms. Varying in their degree of active matter content, these chemicals are introduced into the boiler with injectors or blowers to spread the path where soot generally accumulates.

Corrosion Treatment

Such treatment aims at reducing corrosive deposits which might line the exhaust valves and turbocharger equipments. These are basically used for solid ash particles that are non adhesive in nature and are this ejected by the exhaust gas stream.

Fuel conditioning treatment

Chemical treatments are available for conditioning of fuel in pre-combustion stage. These treatments break the water in-oil emulsions and give a more homogenous fuel. Some of these chemicals contain anti-polymerization agents that hinder sludge formation in addition to stabilizing the fuel.

Multi Functional fuel treatment

Apart from all the specific treatments available, a multi functional fuel treatment that looks after carbon residues that accumulate during combustion thus reduces the performance of the machinery. These chemicals contain combustion catalysts and ash modifiers that inhibit the ignition temperature and increase the combustion time. This leads to lesser tarry deposits and carbonaceous fire scale. These are injected directly into the fuel feed.

All one needs to carry out these fuel oil treatments is a set of chemical treatments that meet the requirement, are available in required quantities and are well formulated to yield the machinery more economically operational and efficient. The end result should be clean treated oil that flows freely up in the heat and not in the smoke.

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