Thursday, April 7, 2016

By Sarah Evans


All forms of liquid fuels that are used in diesel engines are generally called diesel fuels. Fuel ignition in these engines occurs as a result of compression of inlet air mixture as contrasted to the use of sparks. A certain kind of fractional distillate of petroleum oil called petrodiesel is the most common kind of diesel fuel in use today. However, development and adoption are underway for alternatives extracted from petroleum including biomass to liquid, gas to liquid, and biodiesel.

The name petrodiesel is used for all variants of this energy sources which are extracted from petroleum. Ultra-low-sulfur diesel is that which has very low traces of sulfur. The abbreviation ULSD is often used. USLD is in wide is European states and North America. DERV is the term used for petrodiesel used for road vehicles. In Australia, this sources of energy is referred using the name distillate.

Petrodiesel was discovered by a German scientist and inventor named Rudolf Diesel during experiments with a compression-ignition engine he invented. This happened in 1892. The engine was originally designed to use coal dust, but Rudolf continued to experiment with other energy sources. Some of the fuels used in his experiments include peanut oil and vegetable oil. The engine was later exhibited at the World Fair and Paris Exposition.

Production of petrodiesel is achieved through fractionally distilling crude oil. The distillation must be done at 200 to 350 degree Celsius of temperature. The process causes the creation of carbon chains that contain 8-21 atoms of carbon in every molecule. The pressure is maintained at atmospheric pressure level.

The way this substance is stored must follow certain specifications. In the US, the container of storage needs to be yellow in color. The yellow color differentiates petrodiesel from other fuels such as kerosene and gasoline. Containers for storing gasoline are usually colored red while those that store kerosene are colored blue. Other countries have their own conventions. For example, the container used for storage is usually black in color in the UK.

Cetane number is the unit used to gauge the quality of this energy source. Cetane number measures the delay of ignition. When the cetane number is higher, it implies that the substance ignites faster or more readily whenever it is sprayed into air that is hot compressed. Among European countries, road petrodiesel must have a cetane number of 51 as the lowest value. Other variants such as premium petrodiesel have higher cetane numbers.

Petrodiesel and other forms of this substance find use in many applications. When the substance became popular in use, it displaced fuel oil and coal in powering vehicles during the last half of the twentieth century. Today, it is used to power cars, trains, aircrafts, and water vessels among others. It has many attractive features that make it suitable for use in military vehicles.

Previously, oil refineries added a lot of sulfur into this material. The sulfur does a lot of degradation to the environment besides causing pollution. Thus, government intervention forced refineries to cut down on the amounts of sulfur added. Governments and regulatory bodies applied a lot of strategies, but preferential taxations was the most used strategy.




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