Big cost savings in cleansing diesel: Caltex

Heavy commercial vehicle fleets are reaping benefits from fuel that cleans engines from the inside

The oil industry has thrown a lot of money at its advertising and PR agencies to convince car owners they should be refilling the tank with a fuel that cleans injectors and inlet valves in the engine.

But behind those high-profile media campaigns, there's a similarly strong push to convince fleet operators to run their vehicles on diesel fuel that achieves the same objective.

According to Sam Collyer, Senior Media and Communications Adviser for Caltex Australia, fuels across the entire market are being promoted for the improved fuel efficiency that the added cleaning agent can provide. But it's the trucking industry that stands to see the greatest gains.

"We've actually come out in the last couple of years with a premium diesel product – a suite of diesel products for transport and heavy manufacturing industries, where they're using lots of diesel, that boosts some of those additives and boosts some of the cleaning functions and the additional benefits [are there] for big users of diesels," Collyer told trucksales.com.au last week.

"Some of these vehicles are running through huge amounts of fuel, so you're getting multiple fuel cycles where fuel is being pumped through the system and they're clocking up a lot of 'k's. If you're looking for this kind of cleaning action, you do get it by putting extra additive in there to clean the injectors, or keep them clean from new…"

The premium diesel products for heavy trucks are marketed under the banner of Caltex TecDiesel Advantage. Testing some years ago by Orbital Corporation in Western Australia revealed that with the Caltex product pumped through it, a Cummins QSK 19 six-cylinder turbo-diesel recovered 78 per cent of lost output and fuel flow returned to pre-test conditions. Orbital had run regular diesel through the engine, with an accelerant to speed up the formation of carbonaceous deposits on the internals and throughout the injectors.

But Caltex TecDiesel Advantage is not available through normal retail outlets around the country, Collyer advised.

"Typically, a lot of commercial customers may have their own tanks on site; if you're a mining company or a major transport company you may actually have your own tanks somewhere, and then you'd fill them up.

"It's much easier to supply to those sites or to provide a centralised site for everyone to use, than it is to put products into tanks and not have that many customers for them.

"It tends to be for specific customers, and they can monitor their fleets.

"A lot of the case studies coming back from particular transport companies that are using it, they're getting such benefits that they don't want to actually tell anyone they're using it. They say: 'We're happy for you to use the data, but we don't want you to specify who we are, because we don't want our competitors to know that that's how we're operating our business…'

"If you're in the heavy transport industry, it's all very marginal stuff. An extra fraction of a cent a litre, or extending the life of a truck for an extra 10 per cent – that's all tremendously valuable when you're running those as assets.

Even though Orbital's testing was conducted at least three years ago, Collyer says that the product is still new to the market.

"It's still in its early stages, and still building momentum…" he said.

Big cost savings in cleansing diesel: Caltex

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