If you drive your diesel fueled vehicle everyday then you would be refueling it every week. This means your vehicle gets filled with fresh fuel every week. Though a diesel powered generator set uses the same diesel fuel of your vehicle, the situation is different with that of a vehicle. Most standby generator sets consume only a fraction of its diesel stored in tank. The rest of the fuel remains in the tank waiting to be consumed only when the generator is needed. Often this remaining fuel stagnates in the tank for several weeks or months. Contaminants begin to form and fuel quality gradually deteriorates. Now the standby generator set has poor quality fuel in its tank. Contaminants in fuel threatens to attack the engine’s fuel system.

Fuel supply chain also differs between your car and your standby generator. If your car’s fuel tank gets near empty, you simply drive it to a gas station and your car gets refueled directly from the nozzle of the pump. You have peace of mind that fuel pumped into your car is clean and fresh. In the case of heavy generator set you cannot bring it to the gas station to have it refueled. It is the fuel that needs to come to the generator set. So containers are needed such as a jerry can or drum. For those who don’t care about fuel, it doesn’t matter to them if these containers are clean or not. As long as it doesn’t have leaks at all. Dirt, rust, dust, even moisture inside these containers contaminate fuel. Some even use cooking oil cans, soy sauce cans or soft drink bottles. Powercity service technicians even encountered a customer that used hydrochloric acid container in buying diesel from gas station – the result, catastrophic damaged to fuel injection pump in his generator. Anything goes just to carry the precious fuel that most of us don’t care about.

In buying diesel fuel from gas stations, always use clean containers that is made of material compatible with diesel fuel. Usually fuel containers are made of steel like jerry cans. There are type approved fuel containers available in the market which is made of HDPE plastics and with built-in telescopic filler neck to prevent spills. Never use fuel containers with other fluids nor use container of other fluids in buying diesel fuel.

Created by: Eric A. Arevalo
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