Development of a No-Harm Practical Test to Prevent Side-Effects of Additives in Heating Oil

The DGMK Research Report 646 "Catalogue of Criteria for Additives - Standard Heating Oil EL, Low Sulphur Heating Oil EL and Alternative Heating Oil EL" defines minimum test criteria (No-Harm Criteria). Compliance with these criteria should exclude undesirable side effects such as the formation of deposits by additives when used in heating oil burner systems. Depending on the storage conditions of fuel oils and the fuel oil burner technology used, operational malfunctions may occur in the application. Deposits on burner nozzles, preheaters, pumps or filters are usually identified as the cause of damage. The burner nozzle pre-heater unit is a particularly sensitive component. For the determination of the No-Harm criteria for fuel oil additives, currently only laboratory methods are used, which have only a low significance for the interaction of the fuel oils with the application technology. In previous DGMK projects (729 and 726) a test rig was developed to simulate the ageing of fuels in a fuel oil burner system. On this basis, a simplified application-oriented no-harm test for fuel oil additives is to be developed.

The hardware-in-the-loop test principle developed for DGMK projects 726 and 729 maps a fuel oil burner system and is to be used as a basis for the development of a simplified no-harm application test for fuel oil additives. In the project, a simplified test method is to be developed that can serve as a no-harm application test for fuel oil additives in the future and is to be included in the DGMK criteria catalogue for fuel oil additives. The test method serves to investigate the extent to which additives cause undesirable side effects in the form of deposits on fuel oil burner systems. The focus here is particularly on the interaction of the fuel oil additives with the burner nozzle preheater unit. The aim of the test method is to be able to make statements about the operating behaviour such as the fuel volume flow over the burner nozzle-preheater unit of additive fuel oils in less than 200 h, as well as with fuel quantities of less than 10 litres.

DGMK Research Report 792 has been published.