What is in the drum?

[pmccarthy]

In cleaning out a shed on the farm we found a 44 gallon drum. The contents smell like kerosine and it is yellowish in colour. The drum is heavily galvanised and the top is embossed with what looks like AF, with a vertical arrow between those two letters. The drum has been in the shed since at least 1960 and could have been there since the war.

 

we speculate that it is jet A1 or whatever the equivalent was back then. There were two vehicles on the farm that ran on power kerosine back then. Just curious if anyone remembers that sort of drum.

[440032]

Was it found in Snowtown? (asking for a friend...)

[onetrack]

Peter, that would be a WW2 Air Force galvanised drum with the broad arrow denoting Govt property. I still have a number of these drums, they are built out of about 2mm thick steel and have massive pressed rings around the top and bottom of the drum. The galvanising is impressive, they didn't spare the zinc in those days. I'd have to say the contents could be power kerosene, they stopped producing power kerosene in the early 1980's as demand for it had dropped right off.

 

Wartime fuel drums kept getting recirculated into the civilian fuel supply stream, even up to the late 1970's. All the earlier 44 gallon drums have a manufacturing date stamped on the bottom.

As the old drums wore out and new ones replaced them, the new ones became a lot thinner, and they stopped putting date of manufacture on the bottom.

[Marty_d]

Sounds like it'd make a good BBQ! (After contents safely disposed of and volatile compounds gone, of course)

[Old Koreelah]

Peter I bet there's a rural heritage museum in your part of the world. They'd have old tractors that need power kero, so maybe that drum could become a fairdinkum museum prop.

[Butch]

Peter ,

We have an old International W9 Tractor in the shed that was my fathers.

 

It started on petrol and when engine temp was hot enough you would change to power kero. It had shutters on the front of the radiator to regulate the temp that you could adjust.

 

You had to keep the temp gauge in the hot band, if it got to cold it would start to miss fire.

 

When stopping the tractor you had to change back to petrol for a while so it would start next time , it wouldn't start on straight kero.

[facthunter]

Unlikely to be Jet A 1. Power kero is most likely. Using it in tractors even when original often caused severe crankcase oil dilution if they aren't working hard and much less power than with petrol. Don't waste your crankcase oil by diluting it. re the stuff in the drum. Use it for starting camp fires if you have no paper and as a solvent for washing grunge off engines. Nev

[Yenn]

If it was diesel or jet A1 it would not be usable if stored in a galvanised container.

The old power kero tractors will run perfectly well and give more power on petrol, plus no stuffing around getting them hot enough.

[pmccarthy]

The two vehicles were a Chev truck, which had a kero tank added during the war (with a changeover valve), and an Allis Chalmers tracked tractor. Thanks for the feedback, parts washing it is.

[bobcharl]

During WW2 petrol was rationed and many people would store any petrol that was excess to their needs ( rare ) for future use. I recall finding a 44 gallon drum in similar circumstances to pm. I knew from family folklore that it was such petrol. It was yellowish in colour, smelled terrible, could be confused with kero smell but was different. Modern petrol engines would not run on it. It would have been 50 years old.

In those days power kerosine as it was known was coloured green, "lighting"kero ( used in kerosine fridges etc.) was blue.

I was always told that it was illegal to run road vehicles on kerosine, as it was reserved for agriculture, and other industrial uses to aid the war effort. However, many road vehicles were covertly converted to use kero for reasons of cost and availability.

So, could have been either petrol or power kero IMHO.

[old man emu]

During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, kerosene was used in many ways to cure ills of all sorts.

 

An old man I knew was telling me that during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, he was a babe in arms. The 'flu struck his family, killing a sibling and laying low his parents and himself. The District Nurse arrived to see to the family. She prescribed a drop of kerosene on a sugar cube which was then sucked. The old man was in his nineties when he told me that, so it worked. Perhaps that would be a cure for COVID.

 

My grandfather was a dairy farmer from the Northern Rivers of NSW. He had a multitude of mixtures and poultices based on kero to treat maladies in cattle and horses.

 

Beware the cars sales yard that washes their cars with kero. Spray them with water and the paint sparkles like new, despite being chalky when dry.

[facthunter]

Still one of the best (with water and some towelling) to remove tar spots or old wax. Another name for it was paraffin. Paint it on the engine and chassis and wash off with a reasonable jet of water. Distillate works far less well, and doesn't emulsify with water. Nev

[onetrack]

The old engine and tractor restorers wail over the non-availability of power kerosene for their old engines and tractors. Run on petrol, they guzzle the fuel, that's where power kero was good, it was cheap and gave better fuel consumption.

But you had to have heated intake manifolds to run on power kero, it was extremely low octane and burnt poorly.

As Facthunter says, crankcase oil dilution was a major problem with kero, particularly on cold days when the engine was running cool.

 

The restorers resort to making their own mixes out of petrol and lighting kero, or even petrol and some diesel. But someone figured out that a product called Bitumen Cutter or Bitumen Cutback, used to thin bitumen, was almost identical in composition to power kero. The problem is trying to source drums of Bitumen Cutback, it is usually only available from major oil company depots.

[facthunter]

There's no reason why it would give better fuel consumption. Where vapourisation is more difficult there's every chance it would be less efficient as only the gaseous part is valid for the best burn ratio. The unevaporated bit's don't count. It's also about the same SG. You also have to run very low compression ratios to prevent knock and resultant loss of power. Kero is far more expensive than Petrol these days and has been for a long time. The "hot box " in the manifold reduces volumetric efficiency as the intake temps are very high. There is also much more carbon build up in the inlet manifold and under inlet valves.]reducing gas flow. Nev

[old man emu]

There is also much more carbon build up in the inlet manifold and under inlet valves.]reducing gas flow.

 

That sounds counter-intuitive. I would expect the carbon build-up to be on the exhaust side. You would think that carbon would not condense from the vapour/air mixture coming into the engine, but combustion products would be in the exhaust mixture.

 

It is odd that kerosene is so expensive, and hard to obtain in Australia. That could be due to the fact that we have electricity for lighting and heat as well as gas for heat. This mob Kerosene Where To Buy - Kerosene Heater Fuel sells in industrial quantities. It has high flash kero at $4 per litre. This is the high flash point (~ 150C) stuff that's safer for cleaning. They also have regular kero at $2.75 per litre which has a flash point between 38 and 72C.

 

The average price of kerosene around the world is 0.92 Australian Dollar per liter. However, there is substantial difference in these prices among countries. As a general rule, richer countries have higher prices while poorer countries and the countries that produce and export oil have significantly lower prices. The differences in prices across countries are due to the various taxes and subsidies for kerosene. All countries have access to the same petroleum prices of international markets but then decide to impose different taxes. As a result, the retail price of kerosene is different.

 

In less developed countries, kerosene is used for lighting and cooking as well as in small capacity engines. In those countries, the price is generally below the world average.

[facthunter]

re the carbon build up I can assure you it DOES, OME. On some vehicles the build up on inlet valve undersides is so great as to reduce power to below 1/2 of normal by port blockage. It's not burning but degrading to gases and carbon by a sort of distillation process. when thing get rather hot. Nev

[Yenn]

I used kero powered tractors for years and they were a pain to operate. the only reason was hat petrol was in short supply so could only be used for starting. They were down on power and would tend to oil up the plugs badly. One tractor was run with the HT leads cut and a button connected to the middle. That gave a gap in the lead and it used to stop the plugs oiling up. Those plugs could be dismantled for cleaning and if you look at an old Fordson tractor you will see in the radiator cowl there is a hexagonal hole to put the end of the plug in and hold it so you can unscrew the sleeve around the ceramic insulator.

[facthunter]

That method is hard on the magneto. Electricity finds the path of least resistance and may chose to go to earth in the coil windings. It's also much harder to start as the mag turns at 1/2 engine speed and already has a weak spark at slow speed. Nev

[Flightrite]

re the carbon build up I can assure you it DOES, OME. On some vehicles the build up on inlet valve undersides is so great as to reduce power to below 1/2 of normal by port blockage. It's not burning but degrading to gases and carbon by a sort of distillation process. when thing get rather hot. Nev

In another life I used to be a mot mech, the carbon build-up on the valves sometimes was amazing! I was surprised any gases got thru!

[onetrack]

Power kero was around half the cost of petrol in the 1940's, and despite the poorer octane level and the crankcase dilution, power kero was still very popular as a tractor fuel in rural and agricultural areas.

Caterpillar had a specified option for "tractor fuel" (power kero) which involved factory-fitting a different (heated) intake manifold.

 

Interestingly, I have a copy of a Caterpillar booklet called "The Dotted Line" from May 1931, which covers in great detail, all the various types of "low volatility fuels".

The booklet runs to 12 pages in great detail, including the various low volatility fuels available in the worlds regions and countries, and the distillation curves of those fuels - as well as extensive testing by Cat, of those fuels.

 

The booklet states that the fuel refined and in Borneo and sold in the Far East, Malaya, the East Indies, Africa and Australia is a good quality Power Kero, with easy starting on Kero when warm, smooth idling - and crankcase dilution levels were tested and reported as "low" at 0.33% to 1% per hour.

It was reported that this Power Kero was "especially blended for use in spark ignition engines", and its distillation temperature was 240 deg C, as compared to 220 deg C for regular American gasoline.

 

https://www.ausgrain.com.au/Back%20Issues/191mjgrn09/22_Tractor.pdf

[old man emu]

I wonder if the reason that kero is expensive here and hard to find is that there is a much greater demand now for Avtur and Jet A-1.

 

I remember going to my local Ampol service station (it wasn't called a 'servo' back them) and filling a 5 gallon drum with kero at a bowser. We used the kero in a portable Fyreside heater. There was an art in fitting the full glass container of kero into the heater without spilling any. Then another skill was required to light the wick and get the mantle on before it issued black, smelly smoke.

 

[Flightrite]

I wonder if the reason that kero is expensive here and hard to find is that there is a much greater demand now for Avtur and Jet A-1.

 

I remember going to my local Ampol service station (it wasn't called a 'servo' back them) and filling a 5 gallon drum with kero at a bowser. We used the kero in a portable Fyreside heater. There was an art in fitting the full glass container of kero into the heater without spilling any. Then another skill was required to light the wick and get the mantle on before it issued black, smelly smoke.

 

[ATTACH type=full" alt="1592952848495.png]54258[/ATTACH]

They are collectors items these days! Mostly found down the tip once upon a time! Jet A1 was the best fuel for the old kero heaters?

[kgwilson]

Jet A1 is just more highly refined Power Kero so it would go really well in heaters. When I travelled the world in the early 1970s I had a little Kero cooker in my pack. You could get gas cookers and canisters in Europe at that time but not any where else in Asia or Africa. Kero was available everywhere then & I'd get a soft drink bottle full at a local servo which kept me going for a week or more. It needed a bit of metho to preheat it but when it got going & pressurised it pumped out tons of heat. As a kid we always had Kero Cookers and Tilley lamps when we went camping.

[facthunter]

The availability reflects demand and whatever "cuts" of other competing derivatives use up whatever space kero took. In addition to Jet A1 Avtur. there was a JP4 that we didn't use here in aircraft, because it was less safe. Besides lower volatility, Kero has a very low octane and power output is low in a conventional spark ignited motor and power kero straight isn't good for fuel injection. You could put some lubeoil in it and use it in an emergency in a diesel Its fine in model diesels with ether and castor oil. Nev

[old man emu]

I wish people would, once and for all, ditch this myth that Octane Rating of a fuel is equivalent to the power output of a fuel. The amount of power a fuel can produce in an internal combustion engine depends firstly on its inherent energy content and secondly on how close the introduced air/fuel mixture is to the stoichiometric air-fuel ratio. Kero has an energy content of 43 Mj/kg and petrol 44-46 Mj/kg. Pretty much the same. Octane Rating is an empirically derived value. Octane ratings are not indicators of the energy content of fuels. They are only a measure of the fuel's tendency to burn in a controlled manner, rather than exploding in an uncontrolled manner.

 

During the combustion process, if the unburnt portion of the fuel in the combustion chamber is heated (or compressed) too much, pockets of unburnt fuel may self-ignite (detonate) before the main flame front reaches them. Shockwaves produced by detonation can cause much higher pressures than engine components are designed for, and can cause a "knocking" or "pinging" sound. Knocking can cause major engine damage if severe.

 

The octane rating of gasoline is measured in a test engine and is defined by comparison with the mixture of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane (iso-octane) and heptane that would have the same anti-knocking capacity as the fuel under test: the percentage, by volume, of 2,2,4-trimethylpentane in that mixture is the octane number of the fuel. For example, gasoline with the same knocking characteristics as a mixture of 90% iso-octane and 10% heptane would have an octane rating of 90. A rating of 90 does not mean that the gasoline contains just iso-octane and heptane in these proportions, but that it has the same detonation resistance properties.

 

The reason that kero doesn't work well in a spark ignition engine is because its Flash Point ( +37 - 65C) is too high for good vapourisation, which means that its stoichiometric air-fuel ratio cannot be attained. Basically you are introducing an over-rich mixture to the cylinder. If you had a fuel pre-heater that got the fuel up to about 40C before it was introduced to the cylinder, then it should, in theory be as good as petrol.

 

I don't suppose there are many of us who could say whether a kero tractor ran better at the wheat harvest than at sowing.