Prediction of Hydrocarbon Fuel Shelf Life

Recognizing the effective parameters on liquid fuel degradation and its shelf life prediction is an important issue. Most of the researches done in this area are limited to synthetic fuels. In this work, the shelf life of hydrocarbon fuel and the effect of vessel material, blanketing gas and vessel temperature on the amount of generated gum in the fuel have been investigated. The results showed that both aluminum and stainless steel materials are suitable for storage vessel. Moreover, the amount of gum reduces to one-ninth by nitrogen rather than oxygen. Therefore, the stainless steel vessels with nitrogen blanketing gas have been utilized for accelerated ageing tests. According to kinetic studies, the reaction of gum generation was of zero order and the reaction rate constants and the shelf life of fuel at 20, 30 and 40 °C were predicted to be 0.00254, 0.00616 and 0.0141 mg/ 100 ml. day and 43.4, 17.9 and 7.8 months for Arrhenius approach and 0.00299, 0.00639 and 0.0136 mg/ 100 ml. day and 36.6, 17.2 and 8.1 months for Berthelot approach, respectively.