Biodiesel winter blend?

[Robby Ackerman]

What is a recommended winter blend using B100?

Will a blend using 10% gasoline provide a wax free fuel down to 10 F or 0 F?

I have a supplier who will fill my daughter's storage tank with B100, and he's offering to blend it for winter use per her advice. She lives in the Shenadoah Valley in western Virginia.

[Don350SDL]

I don't know for sure, but the hairs on the back of my neck get all raised up at the mention of mixing gasoline with diesel.

Don

[H-townbenzoboy]

In winter, I'd run probably B20 or B50.

[Alex]

Robby,

Is it possible that you mean kerosene rather than gasoline?

[Robby Ackerman]

Here in Virginia if the temperature drops below 14 F I'll add 10% Kerosene. In Alaska, if I remember correctly, we'd add as much as 50% gasoline to truck/industrial diesel engines. But that was in the days when diesel had a higher sulfer content, which helped with the lubricity issue.

The cloud point of B100 is 32 - 35 F. Gasoline (unleaded 89 octane) freezes around -120 and that depends on a number of variables. Diesel clouds around 14 F.

So a B50 blend would cloud around 25 F and a B20 around 19 F.

The way I figure it, a 10% gasoline / 90% B100 would yield a wax point around 22 - 25 F, 20% gasoline 12 -15 F and 30% gasoline 2 - 5 F.

The coldest temps she'll encounter are in the 0 to 10 F range. So theroratically a 30% blend may cover her. Now I vaguely recall reading not to mix more than 20% kero or gaso in these automotive diesel engines. So this leads me to think that in the coldest winter days she needs to buy winterized diesel at a pump and use her B100 with 10% gasoline in cool Spring/Fall days where overnight temps drop in the twenties. I don't see her going the route like Peter Schlesinger, who has added second tank for WVO, with a heater. He starts on diesel brings the WVO up to temp, drives on it, and before he shuts the engine down, he switches back to regular diesel.

On the other hand I've read that --

The light distillates that gasolines are made from have a natural high-octane index. The middle distillates that diesel fuels come from have a high cetane index. The octane and cetane indexes are INVERSE scales. A fuel that has a high octane number has a low cetane number, and a high cetane fuel has a low octane number. Anything with a high octane rating will retard diesel fuel's ability to ignite. Gasoline mixed in diesel fuel will inhibit combustion in a diesel engine and diesel fuel mixed in gasoline will ignite too soon in a gasoline engine.

But not having been there done that, I'd like to know what B100 users are doing to winterize their fuel.