First Fill Diesel Fuel Development 2016-36-0159

Vehicles manufacturers, in search of cost reduction, fill the tanks of recently manufactured vehicles with the least volume of fuel necessary for future commercialization. The adoption of such practice, depending on the diesel fuel storage conditions, may lead to oxidation products formation in the fuel system and to problems during the first start of these vehicles. Some vehicles manufacturers, trying to minimize the occurrence of these problems, replace the diesel fuel in the vehicle tank with new fuel when vehicle storage time reaches 90 days. As a result of such occurrences, the opportunity for a first fill diesel fuel development, that presented better oxidation stability during storage, was identified. In the first stage of the special diesel fuel development, various analyses where conducted in laboratory, in the sense of defining criteria for the fuel formulation, taking into consideration the chemical variability of commercial Brazilian diesel fuel type A and biodiesel. After having stablished this definition, the proposed first fill diesel fuel formulation was evaluated, with the aging of the fuel in vehicle tanks exposed to the weather being monitored for a period of 9 months. The results obtained in this evaluation showed that the tested first fill diesel fuel formulation maintained its stability. The product exhibited adequate performance to reduce oxidation reactions and higher storage stability for a period superior to six months, indicating potential to avoid the problems caused by the repeated starting and stopping of motors during vehicle assembly and storage until the delivery to the final consumer.