Technical Committee Storage, Transportation and Distribution

Separator systems for light liquids and biofuels

In this project, tests were run to investigate the separation behavior of diesel fuel and biodiesel as well as mixtures of both components in model separators on a laboratory scale. These tests showed, that under short times of exposure (4 weeks), higher amounts of biodiesel cause a slightly faster change of the test values of the water phase (IC, TOC, electric conductivity, pH-value), whereas after much longer times of exposure (24 weeks), especially high amounts of diesel fuel are responsible for significant changes of the test values. The observed tendencies are intensified by increase of temperature, addition of tensides or de-icing salt; the tendencies are diminished as expected, when 20% of the water is exchanged periodically.