Stupid Newbie question #87342: Regular Diesel vs “off-road diesel” vs home heating oil

[mo1]

Maybe already stated, and I didn’t see, but…

I thought with the low sulfur fuel, or modern pumps, etc.. that diesel fuel had added lubricants? Part of a spec? Could this make a difference between it and HHO?
But I think in many places #2 diesel is also sold as HHO. (Unless your tank is outdoors, then a mix with #1 or kerosene…)

Diesel fuel and home heating oil have different specs they must meet. Diesel must meet ASTM spec D975 and heating oil must meet ASTM spec D396. The current versions of these specs are behind a paywall but some older versions of these specs are freely available. The main differences according to these older versions of the specs are that diesel fuel has cetane number/cetane index (ASTM specs D613 and D976) requirements, heating oil does not. Newer versions of the D975 spec include a lubricity requirement for diesel fuel (D5001) as well, which with ULSD requires additional lubricants to be added. In short, diesel fuel meets heating oil specs but the reverse is not true.

The real question is whether or not the supplier is simply selling dyed diesel fuel as heating oil, or if they are selling heating oil that meets the D396 spec but not the D975 diesel spec. According to the EPA's Energy Information Administration website, heating oil in New England has been required to be <15 ppm sulfur just like diesel fuel since 2018. In fact, they note that all of the heating oil in New England is simply ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel and meets the diesel fuel specifications. If he lived in New York for example, he would be fine burning heating oil as it is simply red diesel. However, the original poster lives in Maryland, which is not part of New England. According to a 2016 document from the Maryland Department of the Environment regarding residential furnace permitting (yuck), fuel oil is limited to 300 ppm sulfur. Since on-road diesel has been <15 ppm sulfur since 2007 and off-road diesel has been <15 ppm since 2010, it is certainly possible that a fuel supplier could be using a higher-sulfur No. 2 fuel oil that does not meet diesel fuel specs. The sulfur wouldn't hurt a 1960s diesel engine but if it fails other specs such as lubricity or cetane number, the engine might not be too happy.

 

[KilroyJC]

You mean the one at the bottom of that hill on Route 273? Yes it is. Or, there's still a restaurant/bar of some sort there. But it has changed names a few times, and I guess that means it's been bought and sold again and again. I thought its best name was "Impressions from a Rooftop", because my impression from their rooftop would have been "if I look more than a thousand feet in any direction, I still have to look up". If I remember right its current name is "Bottom of the Hill", which makes more sense. Just a little further west is the intersection with Tome Highway, and that has been evolving too. They put in a traffic circle there, and another a few miles east at Blue Ball road too. Traffic circles have not been that easy for locals to adjust to. More than once I've encountered somebody going the wrong way around.

It is an old Stainless-Steel “Silk City” Diner. I think when I was going there it was The Oxford Diner.

first time I ever had a “Gizmo Sandwich”. And they had the grid on the soda machines turned up so that the sodas were REALLY GOOD and not colored water...