Algae in diesel? Go away!

[John Eddy]

I kept a spare 6 gallons of diesel fuel in a plastic container inside my boat. It turns out that I did not use it for about 4 months. When I took the container out for use, I noticed that the diesel fuel was black, and not anything like the shiny red of when I purchased it. I believe that algae grew in my fuel. Can anyone confirm that for me? I did not put any algacide in the container, even though I always put it in my boat's fuel tank. I assume that the fuel is bad in any case and I need to get rid of it. Does anyone have any ideas on how to do that?

 

[Paul Akers]

Home Heating

If you have an oil tank at home, just dump it in. The home units are not very tolerant of what they burn or the quality of the fuel. It will get filtered there, also, before it's burned.

 

[Steve Dion]

Buy a Baja Filter!

John:Buy a Baja Filter and filter the fuel. This is what they sell in Mexico and the filters clean it out. I would pour it in someone oil burner like Paul mentioned. But filtering it for them would be nice.

 

[Bob Clark]

Yup. it's probably alive.

It may be algae and it may be bacteria, and it may be fungus. These things do grow in diesel fuel unfortunately. I agree with Paul... put it into your home heating oil tank. Then clean the tank with hot, soapy water, and dry it with rags.  That home heating oil tank is a good place to get rid of small quantities of any wierd, flammable liquid. I have put a couple of pints of benzene in mine, for example.

 

[ted]

additives

they also produce additives that you can add to your diesel tank to reduce the algae, i dont know the brand name off hand but i do know they produce the stuff.

 

[Jim Cook]

Reuse or recycle

If you don't have anyone who can use the old fuel, you can recycle it with any used motor oil, tranny oil, etc. Our Wal-Mart is very good at taking the stuff.

 

[Gordon Torresen]

Algae ??

Algae usually lives quietlu in water that is beneath the fuel. If you gave your can a good shake you might get them into suspension for a while.  I think you should take the bull by the horns, bad fuel or not, if you suspect there is a problem. Trot that can to any respectible marina or service station and dump it into their recycle tank. You can't have twelve dollars invested. It might be OK to put it in a home heating system but I wouldn't want to find out some cold night.  I would be interested to know if there is any water in the bottom of the can when the fuel is dumped.