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Letter Re: Can I Burn Home Heating Oil or Kerosene in a Diesel Engine?
Hello Jim,
This is in response to the
gentleman's question about using kerosene in diesel engines. Yes, it can
be done. I had two 55 gallon drums of kerosene that were reaching the end of
their storage life. I also have an old Mercedes
diesel car and ran the kerosene with some added lubrication in the vehicle
and it worked very well. You are correct that kerosene doesn't have the same
lubrication values of diesel but that is solved by simply adding vegetable
oil or biodiesel to to the fuel. I used a 10-to-1 ratio as recommended by
another poster on the blog. As far as kerosene burning hotter, it has fewer BTUs
per gallon than diesel so I doubt this is a problem.
This discussion brings up another advantage of diesel engines and it's a big
one. That is the variety of fuels they can run on including kerosene, home
heating oil and vegetable oil-new and used. Some people over at Mercedesshop.com
have even used automatic transmission fluid and lightweight motor oil in their
cars as well. I would only do that for a short period of time and if I were
truly desperate. Several caveats apply here also. Used vegetable oil must be
filtered very well or you will have serious problems. To run 100%
vegetable oil ("straight vegetable oil") in cars it must have a two-tank
system that heats the oil first and flushes the fuel lines with diesel when
shut off
or
the oil
will
solidify
in the fuel lines the car won't restart. However I would not hesitate to use
50% diesel/kerosene with 50% new vegetable oil in warm weather. All this gives
you have several options if you need them. Scenario 1: There
is a major fuel shortage with low supplies and long lines at the pump. With
a diesel engine
you can simply go to the kerosene pump and fill your cans up while everybody
else waits in line. Scenario 2: You are evacuating from a
[Hurricane] Katrina-like situation and begin to run low on fuel. Simply go
to any grocery store and
pick up several
gallons of vegetable oil and dump it in. Then go to the auto parts store and
grab a few quarts of ATF and
motor oil and dump it in if your really low.
Again some of this I would not do unless I was truly hard pressed, but desperate
times call for thinking outside the box. FYI, the drums of kerosene mentioned
above are nine years old and were not stabilized (I didn't know any better
at the time. However, it was in very good condition and ran well in my car.
I hope that this helps
someone. - Jeff in Ohio
