Removing traces of red from a diesel tank

[Scooby074]

If you happen to call a contractor to do this, they might (should) have a tank washer nozzle. They are pretty common. They could get in your 2" port and wash the entire inside using less water than youd think, all well leaving the tank mounted stationary...

 

[pmsmechanic]

Here in Alberta you wouldn't even need to worry about it. The dye needs to be in the fuel in certain concentrations. The police take a sample of your fuel and if there is dye in it the sample gets sent away for analysis. If it's lower than the recommended concentrations then the charges are dropped because obviously you aren't using dyed fuel regularly. Nobody here get's excited if you need a bit of fuel to get to town so that you can fill up and you use a bit of dyed fuel.

 

[Gary Fowler]

I think keeping records of purchase of on road fuel in your trucks should be sufficient along with an explanation of why there might be some red dye in your on road vehicles. It is going to be practically impossible with normal washing equipment to clean the dyed diesel from that tank. Unless your distributor can swap out your tank, the written records and receipt of on road diesel is your best bet.

If you want to clean the tank, I think a good high temperature (450F)steaming might be the best thing to do and would leave you with the least amount of contaminated water to deal with. I have no idea where you could rent a high pressure/high temperature steamer as most steam pressure washers only produce hot water. This is probably a job for a professional cleaner.

 

[DEWFPO]

When we used to wash out old fuel tanks that were being removed and hauled away, we triple rinsed the tanks with water and that was sufficient for all the regulating agencies at the time (mid '90's).

DEWFPO

 

[crazyal]

Around here there are several places that clean out tanks. They specialize in tanks like your talking about as well as aluminum semi tanks. Might want to check around at a local diesel mechanic to see if there's anyone around you that cleans tanks.