Impact of Biodiesel on Fuel Filtration System and Proposed Best Practices

Biodiesel acceptance and consumption increased rapidly from 2018 onwards because of government policies promoting and mandating (in few cases) the consumption of local made Biodiesel feedstock to replace/reduce the import crude oil to save fuel import costs. Currently biodiesel usage is unregulated and non-standardized in few countries and in cases it is mandated and well controlled by local government (e.g. Indonesia). This unregulated, non-standardized and rapidly increasing usage of Biodiesel started to show consequences such as reduced fuel filter life, degradation of engine and filter with material non-compatibility issues with biodiesel and this developed a need of in-depth study, research and creation of recommendations / best practices for the use of Biodiesel in various application. This paper will discuss the root causes of challenges related to usage of biodiesel (manufacturing process, storing and handling of biodiesel at application site), technical challenges and it’s impact on fuel filtration performance supported by some of the lab test data & finally propose a recommendations or best practices to effectively use biodiesel as alternate fuel to achieve best commercial and operational advantages. Although there are several commercially well-known feedstocks available in world, here we will discuss mainly on Palm Biodiesel (PME) which is mandatory in Indonesia with B40 variant recently mandated by local government. The purpose of discussion will be to minimize or eliminate the adverse impact of biodiesel properties & challenges on service life of filter by using premium filtration solutions to avoid drastic changes with engine or OEM equipment.