Product stability of light heating oil gained increasing importance by various factors during the ninety-nineties. These factors include:
- Higher thermal loads of the fuel in increasingly more compact oil systems
- Sensitive constructional elements (nozzles of oil burners) for burners of low power
- Longer storage periods of the fuel as a result of improved efficiency of the oil burners with unaltered storage volumes.
Product stability was already taken into consideration as an additional quality feature, when the specification for light heating oil (DIN 51603-1) was revised in March 1998. The two criteria: thermal and storage stability were included into the list of requirements; however, no suitable test procedure was specified.
Since 1999, the DGMK Project Group 570 has been working on the development of two test procedures. This work differentiates between two project parts:
- 570-1 “Investigations on thermal stability of light heating oil”,
- 570-2 “Investigations on storage stability of light heating oil”.
In the meantime, project part 570-1 was concluded by delivery of a description of the developed test procedure to the German Institute of Standardisation. It may be necessary to conduct further investigations for the definition of a limit value for thermal stability according to DIN 51603-1.
As soon as the test procedure has been standardised, it can be implemented into DIN 51603-1.
This report provides an outline of the development of the test procedure as well as the conducted round-robin
tests.