Algae in tanks

To make changing fuel filters on the road less messy, I have two ice cream buckets with a hole in the lids. I can fill-up the new filter in the bucket. If I spill any, it's stays in the bucket. When I pull the old one off, I put it in the bucket and set it in the curbside tool box, until I get home. It sure would be nice if the filters were flat on the bottom, but I am sure there is a good reason for them being rounded.

 

I think what you guys are calling algae is actually polymerization of vegetable based oil stock. Veg oils react with steel and copper very fast. Aluminum, plastic and SS are much slower but add in hot return fuel and that makes it worse. Gauge senders are usually copper so thats a polymerizing catalyst.

In the wvo community we call it chicken skin. Ive run a few thousand gallons of grease. It has its issues. You need a caustic to melt it off.

 

This is what the watered down new diesel does. Never had a corrosion or slime problem before the new B10 stuff came out and diesel became “synthetic” so to speak. Granted this truck here only gets fueled once every 4-6 months, but it is 48 years old and had no corrosion in it until recently. I also started to see the black staining happening within the last few years inside the tanks of my ‘67 Pete with the b10. Those tanks have always been shiny clean and you could see to the bottom of them.

 

Yeah, thats polymerization from fuels with a percentage of organic base stock. Notice it turned the bare mild steel chain black and rusty but only condensated and hardened up on the aluminum cap.

Unfortunately there isnt much you can do if all your available fuel is a govt mandated blend.

 

When a tank is getting a poly problem you smell it. Very similar scent to oil based paint drying. Thats from linseed oil reacting with air. Linseed is the most rapidly polymerizing of the plant oils so thats why its a drying agent in oil paints.

You old timers probably recall boiled linseed oil as a corrosion preventative. They sell it in a can as boiled linseed oil sitting on a shelf at room temp but thats pretty silly. It was to be applied boiling hot through a sprayer so the oil was thin enough to seep into all the crannies and react with the metal faster. The skin is air tight which stops corrosion. Govt used to spray it inside aircraft fuselage. Probably something better out there by now. Ive sprayed hot fryer oil on many a frame.

 

Another thing that is funny. The real diesel would kill grass this stuff helps it grow. Friend has a wrecker service and uses my place for temporary storage of stuff when his yard is full. Parked a wrecked 2014 Kw that had a weld get cracked on an end cap of an aluminum tank and we didn’t know it. The tank was full when the wrecker dropped it in a grassy spot in the side yard. The fuel leaked out over a couple week period and the grass under it got nice and healthy green in the flow pattern. Lol!

 

Why do some people have so much trouble with bio fuel and others don't? I'm in the Midwest home of corn and soybeans and we've never had a lick of trouble with bio fuel in trucks or tractors that sit a lot of the time

 

I think humidity and temp has a lot to do with it. Down here when its hot its wet and sticky and when its cold its wet. Not much dry air all year round. Always something blowing in from the Gulf to get the humidity high. Guess it is prime conditions for the growth. 3 of my trucks sit in an insulated shop. The fuel caps in the pic are from one of them. The tanks will still have condensation on them sometimes if the humidity is above 85-90% outside even in a closed up shop.

 

Yeah moisture and organic fuels is extra funky.

Its the water in a grease dumpster that goes rancid and stinks, for example. Ive got clean oil thats been in drums 6 years now with no poly or smell.