monton said:
Yeah, but what's the deal with this current deisel actually being able to harm you engine? Deisel engines can practically run on tar (don't worry, I wouldn't actually do this), so why not regular deisel?
Tar not recommended, jet fuel, kerosene, or stove maybe. Actually jet grade A or A1 works fine, when I used to work at an airport we fuelled the trucks with jet A. It is used to fuel diesels up north and in very cold climates where the paraffin in diesel starts to get waxy and gel. The problem is that it doesn’t have the same lubricating qualities and can wear out your injection pump. Adding a little ATF to it prevents this.
I now work for a major oil company, at a refinery, diesel comes off a crude oil fractional distillation column no where near tar. Tar is way more viscous and comes off at the bottom of the column and has to be heated to keep it free flowing, it would be rough on the fuel system for sure!
Currently refineries are producing LSD (low sulphur diesel… no not the drug

) federal regulations require that oil companies start producing ULSD (ultra low sulphur diesel) which obviously contains far less sulphur; less than or equal to 15 parts per million.
The trouble is if you don’t get the suphur out of the fuel it ends up coming out the tailpipe as sulphur or sulphur dioxide. SO2 is produced when sulphur burns in the catalytic converters of gas powered vehicles, this it turn causes acid rain when the SO2 reacts with sunlight and water in the atmosphere. Canada, and the US I believe, are currently producing LSG (low sulphur gas). The sulphur in diesel adds to the particulate problem too.
The production of these fuels is more costly since plants within the refinery need to be modified or built for further hydrotreating. The refinery that I work at is currently constructing an addition to our diesel hydrotreater to make ULSD.
ULSD should be hitting the pumps this fall, September/October in Canada and the US.