alt Hacker NewsI would have thought that backup generators would cumulatively run for maybe a few dozen days over their lifetime. How did the fuel filters get dirty so fast?
Replies
mikestew • yesterday at 6:56 PM
I was thinking the same thing: fix the sediment problem in your fuel tanks, fuel filters shouldn’t get dirty as fast as this story indicates.
cucumber3732842 • yesterday at 11:42 PM
Because a genset that runs once a month and has a fuel tank sized for days of wide open operations is a textbook recipe for asphaltane and other garbage build up. Which of course you won't notice until you actually run the thing for a day straight and the fuel filters start showing it.
swiftcoder • yesterday at 6:56 PM
Bargain-basement and/or very old fuel? Backup generators are not known for having their diesel cycled on the regular
The _fuel_ itself goes bad. Diesel will slowly accumulate dissolved water, and once it gets past a certain threshold, a lot of wonderful bacteria start to flourish in it.
So you get clumps of gunk in your fuel that rapidly clogs the filters.