Can diesel powered vehicles operate on kerosene?  If so, what are the short term and long term impacts of using kerosene?

Only the ones designed to be multifuel.

Kerosene eats up the oil ring seals in most injector pumps unless they are Viton, and ignites quicker which would require retarding the injector timing.

Plus Kerosene has a lower Cetane rating which would cause a lower power output.

So assuming a SHTF event and there is little diesel but I have 40 gallons of kerosene sitting around, would it be a bad idea to supplement say 1/2 tank of diesel with5 gal of kerosene to extend the diesel?

I had a 1964 Mercedes 190D. In the owner’s manual it recommended a 50/50 mix of Kero and 2oil which is used as heating oil (basically the same as diesel without any additives) in the winter. It is a lighter fuel and would improve cold weather starting and fuel flow ability. In summer they recommended 100% 2 oil and varying mixtures between the two depending on temperature.You probably would not want to add much if any in hot weather but in winter it could come in handy.

Friend of mine did that in the 70s with a VW diesel, you can;t run straight kero also because it hs no ability to lubricate, has to be a mix

 Today's ULSD (Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel) also has very low lubricity.Older trucks ––like mine––-have to use an additive to increase lubricity.And it also increase Cetane rarting.I suppose ,in an emergency,a person could burn a mixture of D2 and K1 and get by IF they also added a quantity of Diesel Kleen (or similar product).

In an emergency you can do just about anything to get those vehicles running.

As a for instance.

My dad in winter will mix a gallon or two of kero into his tractors tank, he swears it makes it start easier in the cold. But he will run just about anything through that tractor. He at one time had a mix of used fryer oil, used motor oil, kero and diesel. He is pretty frugal, so whatever oil - ish product he can get his hands on goes into that machine. And it just keeps going, I think he has rolled the hours meter twice.

From WIKI
Blending

Especially in Northern America the gas stations offer two types of diesel fuel - according to ASTM D975[5] these are named No.1 and No.2 fuel. The No.1 fuel (actually kerosene) has a natural CFPP of -40 °C but it is more expensive than No.2 fuel. It is recommended to add No.1 fuel to extend the CFPP of No.2 fuel - adding 10% will lower the CFPP temperature by about 5 degree.[6]

For some diesel motors it is also possible to add even lighter fuels like gasoline to extend the CFPP characteristics. Some car makers were recommending to add up to 20% gasoline to allow operation in cold weather (at the price of higher consumption) and it had been common practice in Europe where No.1 fuel is not offered at gas stations. Since the 1990s car makers began selling only direct injection diesel engines - these will not withstand any gasoline portions in the fuel as the high pressure in the injection device will ignite the gasoline early on possibly destroying the injection.

Car makers selling Common Rail or Unit Injector diesel engines prohibit the blending of diesel fuel with either gasoline or kerosene as it may destroy the injection device.[4][7]
winter blend - the gas station has blended the No.2 diesel with No.1 kerosine by some percentage.
winterized diesel - the No.2 diesel has been treated with additives by the diesel supplier.

As the treatment with additives is a cheaper way (1:40000[35]) to enhance No.2 fuel in winter most stations offer winterized diesel in cold weather conditions. In regions with cold weather in winter, most gas stations offer No.1 fuel at the same pump allowing drivers to decide for themselves on a matching winter blend.

you are absolutely, totally, WRONG!  Winter diesel IS KEROSENE!!   Where do you guys hear this bullshit?!?

Diesels will run on used filtered fryer oil, veggie oil, light lube oil, filtered crankcase drainings, mineral spirits, kerosene, jet fuel, etc etc.  I'd suggest adding some 2 stroke oil to any of the solvents just because.  

You guys who have never owned a diesel nor experimented with one need to be quiet and listen.  you may learn something.

Ops

Sounds like a man who should write a book to me!!!!

Military expedition logistics planners will usually ship bulk JP8 aviation fuel forward and use it to fuel all military diesel vehicles and generators during the surge period (simplifying logistics by moving only one item).

One of my chopper pilots, being a gear head (and responsible for our commercial  F350) made sure that before we started pumping JP8 we put in a quart of new motor oil directly into the tank.  He explained this was to add some lubricating agent into otherwise "Light, sweet" jet fuel.

With current EPA-mandated Ultra Low Sulphur Diesel I usually add 1 ounce of Wally Mart TC-3 ashless 2-stroke oil per gallon before pumping.

We would always add about a quart or so of ATF in our big rigs with this ultra low sulfur crap. Helped a lot. Engine actually ran better, and we lost less injectors. Especially true on the old CAT engine I ran in my freightshaker.

I worked for Exxon for 17 years, owned my 1st diesel car, the 190D, 38 years ago, until recently owned a 39' motor home with a Cummins, own a F450 Diesel and a John Deere Diesel. I have worked on diesel powered vessels from 1200HP to 28,000HP for 34 years. But I don't consider myself an expert, I am the guy who drives. I have been around long enough as a Captain and a Tankerman to have loaded and discharged many millions of gallons of all the "clean" products including Jet, Kero, #2 oil and diesel and seen how clean or dirty they really are. I also have picked up a little bit along the way from the Engineers that kept the boats and ships running.

An older, simpler engine will run on any of them. It will be hard, if not impossible to start in the winter with the heavier fuels. It will not get enough lubrication in the summer with the lighter fuels. Just like before multi grade motor oils, you didn't use 40 weight in the dead of winter in Maine if you wanted to start you vehicle and you didn't use 20 weight in the south in the summer if you didn't want your vehicle to seize. A diesel gets important lubrication from the fuel, not just the crankcase.
New state of the art diesels? I would worry about injectors etc. having very little tolerence for sub par fuel.

In a SHTF senerio, ya gotta do what yoa gotta do. I know a guy who uses nothing but used french fry oil and swears by it but then he has an old Mercedes and has a fricken still / filter contraption in his yard.

Back in the early 80s when I fueled commercial jets at a major airport, we also had the contract to fuel all the ground equipment used by the airlines.  A lot of that equipment was diesel and we filled them with Jet-A every night.  A number of the fuelers also owned diesel vehicles and ran them on sump drainage from the fuel trucks.  I don't know how finicky newer diesels are but the old stuff ran just fine on kero.
 

Jet fuel comes in different flavors.
Some excerts from WIKI
"Jet fuels are sometimes classified as kerosene or naphtha-type. Kerosene-type fuels include Jet A, Jet A-1, JP-5 and JP-8. Naphtha-type jet fuels, sometimes referred to as "wide-cut" jet fuel, include Jet B and JP-4. JP-1 was an early jet fuel, It was a pure kerosene fuel .
JP-4 is a 50-50 kerosene-gasoline blend.  It was the primary U.S. Air Force jet fuel between 1951 and 1995. (I wouldn't want to put that in my airport trucks! ) JP-5 is a yellow kerosene-based jet fuel developed in 1952 for use in aircraft stationed aboard aircraft carriers, where the risk from fire is particularly great. JP-5 is a complex mixture of hydrocarbons, containing alkanes, naphthenes, and aromatic hydrocarbons" ( also wouldn't be my 1st choice in my car) Jet A probably would work great in the winter up north.So it kind of depends on where you are and what you are putting it in.

Practially nothing in the Army when I was getting out (in the 90's) ran on diesel.  JP8 was the single battlefield fuel for the army.  We used it in garrision, on deployment, everywhere.  JP8, as far as the army is concerned, is ALWAYS considered aviation fuel and must be kept to that standard so it can be used in aircraft.  The JP8 we used was put in aircraft as well as cargo trucks and generators (gasoline generators excluded).  We had some gasoline transport assets, but very few.  Things may have changed since then but JP8 (which is kerosene with additives) was THE fuel for the army.

jd1

Still is.

Damn straight!!

Yes, anyone who says different has no clue.

5-10% lube oil mixed with it helps a bit.

JP4 is some nasty stuff, got to see a demonstration of it at school. JP5/JP8 starts out as Jet-A, and the different additives give it the different grades. Diesel when mixed with JP5/8 can make some better power. Older vehicles aren't setup to run kerosene as it will eat the rubber seals (as previously stated) But, running it in newer vehicles causes issues as well. Kerosene is a "drier" fuel but it also has higher 'detergent' values to it. If you plan on running kerosene (or any kerosene derived fuel) have a few extra fuel filters and screens on standby. The kerosene will cause all the sludge and crud to dislodge and get moving. Feel free to run it, but be advised it will cause the filters to clog up quickly.

A 50/50 mix should be just fine. We ran 70/30 JP/Diesel in my brothers 24v Cummins and it made better power and got slightly worse fuel economy.

I put some kerosene in my new (to me) 15 year old tractor.  Wanted to use it to help clean the fuel lines and tank.  Ran just fine.  Didn't run pure kerosene but probably ran 40%.

It's not legal from an emissions standoint, a quart or two of used motor oil mixed with kerosene will run just fine in a diesel.

When we lived in Buffalo and had to drive back to family in MN in the winter in the -20 time of year, we had to run kero as not a single station near the place in NY had #1. Tried using mixes one year and gelled up in WI at -25 in the middle of the night... Everything ran great with the kero. Tried to keep kero to diesel at about 50/50. Worked in our diesel truck and diesel VW.

i was short on money when i got divorced last january. i ended up burning some of my kerosene in my suburban to get thru till payday. i could not tell a difference, and truck is still running fine.

In a similar vein, will a modern gasoline engine tolerate  5 to 10% kerosene?

tolerate, perhaps.

but the combustion initiation method differs significantly between a gas engine (spark) and diesel engine (compression), and therefore the fuel requirements are quite different.

ar-jedi

Cylinder head temps will increase rapidly in a gas engine, you will get detonation and destroy your engine.

Ok.  I have ten gallons of old kerosene and I don't have anyone I know that has a diesel.  Fuel is fine,  just old,  so it runs stinky in my Kersosun heater.  Just trying to do the right thing and burn it up and do something useful with it and then replace it with new fuel for the next season.  The truck is an E85 engine so it burns most anything from corn liquor to racing fuel.  

I'm going to very conservatively add a bit of kerosene per tank full,  like a half gallon per fill up.  Ford Ranger has 180,000 miles and one time I bought some really crappy fuel, bucking and coughing, and to increase octane added a couple quarts of 2 stroke oil.  Wasn't water, adding Dry-Out or whatever that's called made no difference.  Added 2 quarts of synthetic racing 2 stroke oil and it smoothed right out.

That's a 2% mix –– 1/2 gallon of 2 stroke into a 20 gallon tank.  That was at 100,000 miles.  Still running just fine.

Just curious if anybody else had any experience with blending different weight fuels.

Thanks.

I've heard that pipelines all use the same pipeline for different kinds of fuels. When a storage facility taps the line for fuel, they check for specific gravity of the fuel they need. When it does not meet spec for specific gravity, it goes into a "slop tank" until the line produces the necessary specific gravity, then it's flowed into a storage tank.

When the fuel goes back out, fuel from the "slop tank" gets added back to the "in spec" fuel at a rate where it remains "in spec".

There's got to be someone on here who works on a pipeline or a storage facility who can verify and comment on this.

But theoretically, it should work as long as you remain "in spec". The problem is your guessing unless you can measure specific gravity of fuel.

Interesting...

You know, thinkin abt this, kero isn't that much different than mineral spirits, lot's o folks burn mineral spirits or mix it with their lantern/heater fuel.

And, since the mystery fuel additives contain mostly kerosene or mineral spirits/Stoddard solvent [per the MSDS sheets when you can find them], and so many folks add it to their fuel w/ no problems, why not use your kero up the same way?

Tcw-3 two stroke oil is a GREAT additive for combustion engines. I quit all additives after discovering it. 400/1 ratio and it helps lubricate injectors pump keep seals oiled and decreases detonation. Heard that from a couple of petroleum engineers.  I've never tried it in diesel though. Only my built ls3 trans am.

Sometimes I pour some acetone into the fuel. Every couple years, it's time again...

Supposed to clean injectors and get better mileage.

IDK, it's a mystery to me.

I do not subscribe to the myth that kerosene will eat your o-rings and seals. Its pure bullshit. There are no more evil ingredients in a pint of kerosene than a pint of regular diesel. I've burned everything I can imagine in my Kubota, both straight and in various mixture ratios. I've burned kerosene, diesel, offroad diesel, straight WMO, straight veg oil, transmission fluid, heating oil, and even some homemade bio-diesel as well. The only difference I can tell is that its smokier and smellier with some than with others, and thats about it.

There's some terrible advice in this thread.

If you own a modern, common-rail diesel, do NOT pour anything into the fuel tank that isn't engineered to be there.

I've ran some through my 06 GM diesel, there are whole articles on this on the diesel truck websites. Of course there's some worry about the newer models designed for newer low sulfur diesel that use the filters and urea injection.

But all vehicles would have to be able to handle a small amount of oil in their combustion chamber, simply from the cylinder wall lubrication.

We used to add kersene to diesel in the winter to prevent jelling.
It will run in a diesel but with less life of injecter pumps, if I had to run it I would add some ATF to the tank.
The local airport used to use jet fuel in their tractor and after a period of time it destroyed the injection pump.