I seem to be having an issue with my dry wash set up. I have a lead lag set up with 10x54 FRP tanks and 100 mesh strainers at the bottom of each tube. The lead tank holds Thermax and the lag tank has Purolite. The fuel is being gravity fed from a tote on a pallet rack at a rate less than or equal to .3 gpm.

The batch I made settled for a long time and was very clear before washing. This batch is the first I'm sending through the dry wash set up. Looked good coming out of the lead tank and was also clear coming out of the lag tank for a while. I had to leave the shop and didn't want it to flow unattended, so I stopped the flow with a ball valve near the tote (before the frp tanks). I only ran maybe 15 gallons through.

I came back the next day and the fuel coming from the lag tank was dark brownish and has an odor I can only relate to a faint skunk smell. I could see some very fine sediment in it. I opened the ball valve back up to see what would happen and the fuel continued to flow from the lag (Purolite) tank with the same color and odor. The fuel still looks good going in and out of the lead tank with the Thermax.

I did read another post that mentioned not letting the fuel sit in the resin. The nature of my set up as an up flow system doesn't allow complete draining.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!!

How are your FRP tanks setup? Did you reconfigure the guts of it like Legal Eagle's?

The reason I ask about the configuration is I had a similar problem once with Thermax. I put a black iron pipe inside my tank and the protective coating on the pipe dissolved in the BD. My BD was almost black after coming out. I just ran it through some wood shavings and 1 micron sock filters until it changed back to amber. After a while the protective coating is gone and it becomes a non-issue.

A better way to approach this in retrospect is to sand the protective coating off the pipe prior to inserting it in the FRP tank.

Funny you should ask that. I actually did in fact take the coating and paint off the black pipe. I also ran coarse and fine steel wool through the inside of the pipes and blew them out with compressed air. I figured it wasn't much trouble to do it and I would keep things cleaner anyhow.

I used these at the end of the pipes: strainers

This sediment and staining is coming from the lag tank with the Purolite. Fuel is clear exiting the lead tank with the Thermax.

I'm thinking its not a big deal, and will eventually stop...but I'd like to rule out any mistakes I may have made...and confirm that it won't continue and waste the investment in the fuel and resin.

I set up a lead/lag config using only Purolite PD206 and didn't get any leaching at all after I did the mods posted on my site. It could be that some finer powder got into the resin bag and that is what you are seeing. I final filter using a CAT 2 micron absolute fuel filter can, although it is still doing fine after a full year's worth of filtering. Maybe this is an option you could look at ?

Curdy,

You have a real smart set-up and the only thing I can think of after our conversations is to take Purolite up on replacing the resin. The PD206 is known to have a wider spread in individual bead size than other gel resins.

You can look on their website and get a graph which outlines this difference in bead size. Some theories hold that having a slightly variance in bead size can be more effective over time as the beads naturally segregate by size (larger beads on bottom and smaller beads on top) - still you shouldn't have the phenomenon that your experiencing.

GCG