diesel fuel in a home fuel oil furnace?

Yes, but it's generally more expensive account of the road fuel taxes. #2 should work fine.

Why, it will cost more. ULSD would be the product to use, but why pay road taxes when you can buy heating oil for less? Some diesel owners buy heating oil just to avoid the road tax and risk some hefty fines if they are found out.

Yes, or K-1 (kerosene).

I know. You aren't on automatic delivery and if you run out, what do you do? Keep a couple of 5 gallon cans around...

Yes, essentially the only differences between the #2 heating oil in your tank and the #2 diesel at the pump are the transportation fuel taxes you pay at the pump and the red dye they put in the non taxed heating oil. Otherwise they are interchangeable functionally, and the heating oil is also known as "off road diesel" since it's legal to use in off road equipment.

Right now Diesel is about $3.249 at the pump. Several people have posted in here in the last few days about heating oil being almost exactly the same price, so it looks like there would be no benefit in using Diesel in a heating system, or heating oil in a Diesel vehicle, from a cost standpoint. Larry

on 2/2/2008 8:44 AM Dr. Hardcrab said the following:

Diesel fuel is going for $3.56 to $3.80 a gallon around here. Kerosene is about $3.90 a gallon Heating oil is $2.93 to 3.39 a gallon. Looks like heating oil is the cheapest, for me anyway.

Here diesel is $3.59 and fuel oil is that minus the taxes, around $3.20 Fuel oil is always cheaper than diesel because it is not taxed.

That is not entirely correct. I was checking out the use of furnace fuel oil to power my standby generator. I contacted a number of major oil companies and got some surprising answers. Apparently, in some small markets, fuel oil and diesel are identical, but sometimes and in high demand areas they are different. They both use the same base stock but diesel is required to have a certain quality and "cetane" level (equivalent to octane in gasoline) to prevent damage to engines, furnace oil does not and (these are my own words because they would not come out and admit it) since it only burns oil, they can ship any old shit they have around that fits the basic specifications for furnace oil --- this stuff they warned not to use in engines.

So there is a reason other than taxes, that diesel is more expensive than fuel oil. You can use diesel fuel in a furnace, as it is the good stuff, but don't use fuel oil in your engine, because it may damage the engine if they are shipping the junk oil.

Little or no financial benefit as far as cost per gallon, but for folks not on automatic delivery who aren't paying attention and let their heating tank run dry, it's much cheaper to take two 5gal cans to the gas station and use that to keep the furnace running until getting a normal delivery the next day vs. an emergency delivery.

It is a little more complicated than that. Diesel fuel typically is sold as "diesel fuel" not a particular # oil. If the diesel fuel is sold in a freezing climate a certain percentage of #1 is mixed in to minimize fuel gelling effects.

People who have outdoor fuel oil tanks have the same jelling problems as vehicles, I would assume that winter heating oil in cold climates is "adjusted" similarly to vehicle fuel. In this area #1 heating oil is thin, probably mostly kerosene and used in "heaters" that don't pump the oil into the combustion chamber, #2 heating oil is thicker and used in fuel oil burners. Diesel oil is rated as #2 diesel for use in engines and #1 version of diesel oil is jet fuel grade.

In addition, the sulphur content in home heating oil is significantly higher than that of on-road diesel -- upwards of 5,000 ppm, whereas ULSD is limited to 15 ppm or less. Marine diesel, or what is commonly known as "Bunker C", is the dirtiest of all; it can reach as high as

Cheers, Paul

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It's a whole lot more complicated than that... :)

"...multifunctional diesel fuel additive packages are built around ... dispersant/detergent technology which meets the requirements for ...injector cleanliness. ... The detergent can be combined with other functional components such as lubricity improver, cold flow improver, deicer, cetane improver, corrosion inhibitor and/or demulsifier to deliver additional benefits..."

W/O the additional lubricity specifically, no modern diesel engine will last long and the injector-cleanliness requirements as well as S limits on road-fuels are significant factors. Underneath, yes, it's "fuel oil", but the engine-diesel is far more sophisticated a product.

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Agree.

I didn't want to get into it that deep but what you wrote is accurate. My buddy has a liquid fuels business and he often tells me of all of the hassles of keeping track of all of this and the multiple trips his trucks have to run for the separate products.

I think you may be mixing a few terms. "Diesel oil" is a product that varies according to climate and isn't a specific oil # grade. #1 is kerosene by definition. Jet fuel isn't diesel. In the case of commonly used Jet A it is a very clear higher purity version of kerosene. Antimicrobial and other agents are typically added during fueling.

At least around here they don't miz oils used for heating purposes. If someone has an outside tank they will deliver #1 unless you specifically tell them otherwise. If you have an underground or inside tank they will deliver #2 unless you tell them otherwise. There are also other heavier grades of fuel oil that are commonly used but they aren't used to heat homes.

I have 2 - 5 gallon cans of kerosene. My local hardware store carries kerosene. I average about 4 gallons a day in the winter, so that will cover a couple of days. I usually run out on a Sunday or a holiday. :-).

Diesel is too 'dirty' to use in a furnace.

Meat Plow wrote: ...

"Dirty" in what sense? It'll be far lower in S than fuel oil, certainly, owing to the EPA reg's on motor fuels that don't apply to heating fuel. Depending on grade of fuel oil, could be quite a lot cleaner-burning, actually...

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I never got a chance to analyze either in a lab. Blame Trane for my answer.