Search Results

Many modern diesel fuel injection equipment designs rely totally on the fuel to provide lubrication. The ability of a diesel fuel to lubricate diesel fuel injection equipment has become commonly referred to as its “lubricity”. If a diesel fuel has insufficient lubricity then the performance of the fuel injection equipment can be compromised resulting in reduced durability and increased vehicle emissions. We have been studying diesel fuel lubricity since the early 1990s using a test rig. The test rig consists of a motored distributor type fuel injection pump, injectors and a fuel handling/circulation system. This paper reviews test rig results on a total of twenty three different base fuels. The pump test rig results are compared to the inspection properties of the test fuels and conclusions derived.

The durability and performance of diesel fuel injection equipment in actual use continues to be a concern for the manufacturers of diesel powered equipment, diesel fuel injection equipment suppliers and diesel fuel suppliers This concern has been caused by recent changes to both the equipment and the diesel fuel driven by environmental legislation The term “lubricity” has become commonly used to describe the ability of a diesel fuel to prevent or minimise wear in diesel fuel injection equipment Of particular interest are distributor and rotary type fuel injection pumps that rely totally on the fuel for lubrication These pump types are commonly used in light and medium duty diesel engines Earlier work has shown that fuels with good low temperature properties have inherently poorer lubricity performance than summer quality diesel fuels (1, 2)* Due to the need for such fuels in Canada we have been investigating the lubricity performance of winter diesel fuels for a number of years Most recently we have studied the lubricity performance of various fuels and additives in rotary type pumps and related these results to the test fuel properties, including lubricity as measured in a number of current lab bench tests