Diesel Fuel

ENXSA specialises in marketing, brokering, and trading diesel that is compliant to new standardisations of Europe and North America.

Diesel fuel in general is any fuel used in diesel engines. The most common is a specific fractional distillate of petroleum fuel oil. Ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD) is a term used to describe a standard for defining diesel fuel with substantially lowered sulfur contents. As of 2007, almost every diesel fuel available in America and Europe is the ULSD type.

Petroleum diesel, also called petrodiesel or fossil diesel is produced from petroleum and is a hydrocarbon mixture, obtained in the fractional distillation of crude oil between 200 °C and 350 °C at atmospheric pressure. The density of petroleum diesel is about 0.85 kg/l (7.09 lbs/gallon) whereas petrol (gasoline) has a density of about 0.72 kg/l (6.01 lbs/gallon), about 15% less. When burnt, diesel typically releases about 38.6 MJ/l (138,700 BTU per US gallon), whereas gasoline releases 34.9 MJ/l (125,000 BTU per US gallon), 10% lear by energy density, but 45.41 MJ/kg and 48.47 MJ/kg, 6.7% more by specific energy. Diesel is generally simpler to refine from petroleum than gasoline. The price of diesel traditionally rises during colder months as demand for heating oil rises, which is refined in much the same way. In many parts of the U.S. and throughout the UK and Australia diesel may be higher priced than petrol. Reasons, diversion of mass refining capacity to gasoline production, and a recent transfer to ultra-low sulfur diesel (ULSD), which causes infrastructural complications.

Unlike Petroleum ether and Liquefied petroleum gas engines, diesel engines do not use high voltage spark ignition (sparkplugs). An engine running on diesel compresses the air inside the cylinder to high pressures and temperatures (compression ratios from 15:1 to 25:1 are common); the diesel is generally injected directly into the cylinder near the end of the compression stroke. The high temperatures inside the cylinder causes the diesel fuel to react with the oxygen in the mix (burn or oxidize), heating and expanding the burning mixture in order to convert the thermal/pressure difference into mechanical work; i.e., to move the piston. (Glow plugs are used to assist starting the engine to forewarm cylinders to reach a minimum operating temperature.) The high compression ratios and throttleless operation of the diesels generally result in diesel engines being more efficient than many spark-ignited engines. This and being less flammable/explosive than gasoline are the main reasons for military use of diesel in armoured fighting vehicles like tanks and trucks. Engines running on diesel also provide more torque and are less likely to stall; as they run at a lower RPM, they will rather stutter a lot before stalling. An important disadvantage of diesel as a vehicle fuel, compared to gasoline or other petroleum derived fuels, is that its viscosity increases quickly as the fuel's temperature decreases, turning into a non-flowing gel at temperatures as high as -19 °C (-2.2 °F) or -15 °C (+5 °F), which can't be pumped by regular fuel pumps. Special low temperature diesel contains additives that keep it in a more liquid state at lower temperatures, yet starting a diesel engine in very cold weather still poses considerable difficulties.

In the past, diesel fuel contained higher quantities of sulphur. European emission standards and preferential taxation have forced oil refineries to dramatically reduce the level of sulfur in diesel fuels. In the United States, more stringent emission standards have been adopted with the transition to ULSD starting in 2006 and becoming mandatory on June 1, 2010. U.S. diesel fuel typically also has a lower cetane number (a measure of ignition quality) than European diesel, resulting in worse cold weather performance and some increase in emissions.

Diesel grades available:




Compositions

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