Smelly Oil (Kerosene)

[cpvh]

Hi All,

We recently had our tank refilled and it was very smelly within about 5 meters in any direction of it over the weekend. My feeling was that this was just normal for the weather we had this weekend. But my wife thinks there must be a problem.

So, are your tanks also smelly at the moment?

[Michael Chare]

In general my oil tank does not smell. I suspect you have a leak.

[alan_m]

Or because it's just been refilled possibly some spillage outside of the tank.

Last summer in very hot weather I was standing on top of a fuel tank nk (one foot on a ladder, one foot on the tank) cutting down a friend's overgrow hedge and despite a prolonged spell of hot weather in the preceding couple of weeks no smell of fuel was detected.

[cpvh]

Thanks both.

I have called in the experts.

[newshound]

+1

[NY]

Sometimes you can get a lingering smell from outside of the filling company's hose if it's got oil smeared along the length (eg because some oil has spilled on it while it''s been wound up on the rell on the lorry) and that oil then transfers to the ground that the pipe has laid on during filling.

It doesn't take much oil to leave a very all-pervasive smell. I don't notice it too much - it's not as bad as petrol, although being a heaier fraction it doesn't evaporate as quickly) but my wife notices it. Even if I get a bit of diesel on my hands when I'm filing up the car (despite wearing the plastic gloves) my wife says she feels sick and makes me go wash my hands.

[Brian Gaff]

Yes in his vegetable plot. He might have a not verywell fitting cap? Brian

[Marland]

I wonder if just occasionally a batch is more aromatic for some reason. We do not have a tank but our neighbours do and it is only a few years old.In

2016 it stunk like blazes all summer though fortunately it did not pervade the house. The greenhouse was affected badly as being up the garden it was fairly close on the other side of the fence and with side and roof vents open in warm weather sucked the smell in. We get on well with the neighbours so it was no problem to mention it and they were quite embarrassed , being not too practical people they let me poke around the tank . Found no leaks and even dug a few inches around it to see if any spillage soaked in the soil but no wetness found. There was a loose cap on a pipe but that turned out to be the dip pipe for the built in bund compartment and that was dry. Nothing more could be tried so had to live with it for the year, 2017 no problems at all. All that was different was the oil inside which had been refilled a couple of times. Do the suppliers vary the composition of heating oil slightly between summer and winter? I wondered perhaps if the neighbours in 2016 got a top up of winter grade if such a thing exists just before the season changed and that if it had more aromatics in it we were stuck with it warming up in that summer.

GH

[NY]

Almost certainly heating oil is like diesel in that there are (theoretically) different grades for summer and winter.

However heating oil, unlike diesel in a vehicle, stays in the tank for many months, so if they filled up with summer oil it may go waxy in the winter. So heating oil may *all* be winter grade to allow for the worst case of -20 deg C in a cold winter, even if supplied during the summer.

I've forgotten how long our 1400 litre tank lasted.

For diesel, are there disadvantages with winter diesel (cost; combustion temperature and hence vehicle performance)? I presume there must be, otherwise they'd use winter diesel all the time to avoid having to manage the changeover.

[Martin Brown]

More likely if it has just had a recent delivery that there is a minor spill or overflow of diesel foam from the expansion vent.

I generally notice a trace from the expansion vent but nothing more than that. A good indicator of a leak is next time it rains hard look for rainbow like interference colours on the wet surfaces near to the tank.

If it is a metal tank it might be worth getting someone to do a thickness test as they eventually fail on the boundary between the water accumulated at the bottom of the tank and the oil. Leakage tends to be faster when there is a full tank of oil above providing the pressure.

My old one was shown to be rust held together by Hammerite when it was replaced - it looked fine externally but had rotted on the inside.

But my money is on the recent delivery being a bit messy. YMMV

[Johnny B Good]

Paraffin (kerosene) is/was used to create a 'winter fuel mix' for diesel engined vehilcles where up to 25% of the mix was paraffin(kerosene) which did reduce performance slightly. Unfortunately, because paraffin (kerosene) isn't available with road duty tax pre-levied, that advice in diesel engine car(automobile) owner's manuals' of three decades or so back, became "Up to 25% of unleaded petroleum (gasoline) may be used to lower the waxing temperature during the winter season." just to stay this side of "The Law".

So, my guess is that there's no such thing as "summer" and "winter" grade paraffin (kerosene) or, for that matter, JP4 aviation fuel for passenger jets routinely flying at altitudes where the air temperature can be as low as -60 deg C. Otoh, there obviously are summer and winter grades of DERV which might[1] matter in the case of large tanks of the stuff used to fuel large emergency standby generators.

[1] A permanent installation of such a diesel powered standby emergency generator only needs to ensure that the fuel storage tank and pipework is kept above a minimum temperature which is usually done by the simple expedient of keeping it indoors alongside of the 100KVA or larger genset in the generator/boiler room or house. Otherwise for an outside tank, it's just a matter of insulation and some form of tank heating and insulated pipe feeds wrapped with heater tape.

The energy costs of keeping 'ordinary' diesel from waxing under very cold winter conditions in an emergency backup system is chicken feed compared to all the other running costs of maintaining such a system serviceable at all times, especially since it removes the question of when to change from 'summer' to 'winter' grade diesel fuel.

Although a smaller tank of 'winter grade' fuel *might* be maintained as an emergency startup fuel in case a problem in the temperature conditioning of the main tankage arises at the worst possible moment, it's more likely that redundancy in the pipework tape heating system would be utilised to overcome that very small risk of failure - I'm not an emergency standby power systems engineer by trade.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ours doesn't normally smell but a hot still day there can be a bit of odour. Tank sit's in full sun.