What is 'distillate'?

[upgw]

What is \'distillate\'?

Many of the antique tractors could apparently run on gasoline, kerosene (not using a diesel cycle though) and something called 'distillate', which was apparently very low octane but more available during the war. Was "distillate" some type of alchohol?

For kerosene, you had start on gasoline and when the engine was hot and kerosene was heated enough by the exhaust manifold (via special intake manifold) you could switch over and run on kerosene... I imagine that produced quite a bit of exhaust smoke! You had to switch back to gas before shutdown for the next startup cycle.

- P

 

[daedong]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

I have always thought distillate to be diesel

 

[RonR]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

I've assumed for years that distillate was most similar to kerosene.

An antique McCormack Deering I owned had three "fuel" tanks originally. It had about a 15 gallon tank for kerosene, an 8 (or so) gallon tank for WATER, and a 2 gallon tank for gasoline. The tanks sat end to end. Each tank had a shut off valve under the tank. All three fed into the line going into the carbeurator.

Method was to turn off the kerosene and water before you shut down the motor. Then when you wanted to start it, you opened the gasoline valve and cranked. When the engine started and warmed up, you opened the kerosene and water and shut off the gasoline.

I've heard people say that if you killed the engine on kerosene, you had a PROBLEM getting it going again.

The man that gave me guidance on restoring mine said "Don't run it on kerosene!"

Hope this helps.
ron

 

[tracdoc]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

A pretty good capsule summary of the all fuel engines can be found in:
Foothills Tractor Club

The term "distillate" is pretty generic. Basically, it refers to the heating of a liquid composed of a mixture of compounds in order to separate the components of the mixture. As the temperature goes up, compounds with the lower boiling points will vaporize first. As the vapors rise, they are entrained in a cooling coil, aka condenser, where they re-liquify and are collected. In that way, a mixture of compounds can be fractionated, i.e., resolved into its components.

In the crude oil refining process, the crude is heated, and the lower boiling point materials (fractions) are vaporized first. These fractions are the most easily vaporized fuels, including gasoline. As the temperature of the pot continues to be raised, the higher boiling point fractions are vaporized, kero > light diesel > heavy diesel, etc. These higher boiling fractions have more potential energy, but the trade-off is that they are more diffficult to vaporize and then ignite in a combustion engine.

Alcohol is also produced by a distillation process. The fermented material is heated, the alcohol vaporizes, and it is collected via a condenser.

 

[EastTexFrank]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

Tracdoc gave a good explanation. I've also seen the term "distillate" applied to the liquid dropout from natural gas wells. Not to make it too long, sometimes on natural gas wells as they are being produced the gas comes to the surface at a lower temperature and pressure than it was in the reservoir. This allows certain fractions to condense out. It is usually called condensate, more rarely distillate.

I'm told that 60 years ago it was a pain for the oil companies to handle because it formed "slugs" in the gas transmission lines and had to be seperated out which was more expensive (but not any more). I'm also told that those who had gas/condensate wells on their property during WW2 could tap it to use instead of gasoline in their cars. Since it is the most volatile liquid fraction it may have needed to be cut with regular gas before being used and I think it would be way to volatile to use in a diesel engine but you never know ... necessity is the mother of invention.

 

[RobertN]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

Great descriptions have been given here.

I posted this question over on YTMag. There was a pretty good answer there too, if you want to look.
www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=farmall&th=430607

 

[Jimbrown]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

You are exatly right. In south Texas where there are lots of old gas wells they almost always have a seperator and a tank to collect the condesate. It is commonly called casing head gasoline. It will run in most any gasoline engine but the octane is very low and it has no anti knock coumpounds in it. It was commonly run in Model T,s and A,s and when I was a teenager almost every teen kept a 5 gallon in their old wreck to steal a few gallons when we did not have money to buy gas.

 

[upgw]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

Sounds like it could be two things: Either some intermediate condensation byproduct of distilling crude oil into various compounds or the liquid that comes out of a natural gas well. The Farmall 130 manual calls for daily partial oil changes when running on 'distillate' so a lot of it must have made its way down into the oil past the rings.

Thanks everybody for all the info.

- P

 

[Bird]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

It was commonly called "drip gas" in southern Oklahoma when I was a teenager.

 

[jinman]

Re: What is \'distillate\'?

Not to "muddy the waters," but when I was in the US Navy, the fuel used to fire the boilers on steam driven ships was called Navy distillate. It was similar to kerosene without the purity and additives of jet fuel. It also had a higher flashpoint. Many ships were in the process of converting to JP4/5 because it was a better fuel with less residue in the boilers.

Of course, many WWII ships ran on black oil which was a totally different type of fuel.