Ken seemed to know what he was talking about and he had the backing of some pretty smart folks. I haven't tasted the kool-aid he was serving, so I'll reserve judgement for the time being. I did learn a few things though.
Ken kept referring to the ethanol in diesel. I was fully aware of bio-diesel. But he wasn't talking about bio-diesel. I looked into the ethanol content in diesel fuel, and sure enough #2 diesel has about 15% ethanol content. Based on the quick read I did, ethanol is necessary in the ultra low sulfur fuel delivered at the pump. It's there to increase the cetane and to add lubricity. Outside the US there are E-Diesel markings, like we do with gasoline where we use to have E-85 gasoline (85% ethanol). In the US we seem to only have markings for bio-diesel, and then only over 5%, like B20.
Water in our fuel is one of our engine's enemies and ethanol does add to the risk of water. Before ethanol, condensation was the biggest contributor to water. In my years of boating, water could effectively be managed with Racor and similar water separation systems. I have yet to find water in the Racor on my coach, although I won't go so far as to suggesting it isn't there in some small quantity.
Sludge is probably a bigger problem. Although referred to as algae, that's probably not exactly correct given there is no light to promote the growth of algae. Whatever it is, it's obvious when you pull a Racor filter and look at it. It looks like black tar. It can be management through fuel polishing (filtering the fuel outside the fuel delivery lines), the use of centrifugal pumps, and algaecides (there's that name again). The theory on many of the algaecides is that it will break down the tar-like mess to particles fine enough to be safely ran through the injectors. There's also at least one company that believes they can break down the tar small enough by running the fuel through a small device with magnets in it. These solutions have been widely used by the yachting industry for many years.
I always used fuel additives in my boats, but have never done so in the coach. For those that use this product, or other similar products, I'd like to hear your thoughts after you've used the product for several tank loads of fuel. Dale, keep us posted.
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