Tier 4 diesel engines require cleaner fuel

Whether yacht engines are Tier 3 or Tier 4, at the heart of addressing MARPOL Annex VI is fuel quality. As manufacturers increase the pressure of the fuel injected through the common rail system, fuel cleanliness becomes paramount. These newer engines have particulate filters to catch contaminants as small as two or three microns, since larger particles can clog the injection system. Remembering that the average diameter of a human hair is 80 microns, it doesn’t take a large-size particle to create an expensive injector failure. And injector failure due to poor quality fuel is not covered under warranty repair.

Therefore, the quality of fuel should be sampled for the quantity and size of contaminants before it is bunkered on board and regularly while it is in storage in your yacht’s fuel tanks, before it is burned. This sampling can be done with a portable particle counter. Using the International Organization for Standardization’s cleanliness code (ISO 4406), the particle counter samples fuel to determine the number of particles of different sizes present per milliliter of fluid. ISO 4406 is a shorthand method of defining cleanliness in fluids using a three-number system

.Read more: http://www.the-triton.com/2015/03/tier-4-diesel-engines-require-cleaner-fuel/