Pam and I rented a car and drove from the Atlantic Highlands in New Jersey to Annapolis Maryland. We arrived at 3:45 at the doggie hotel, which closed at 4 PM seems that we are always cutting things close nowadays. We enjoyed a fantastic party with old friends. It doesn't get any better than that.
Yesterday we went to the sailboat show. No one seemed to be checkingd we got in even though we have a trawler. We didn't look at any sailboats and only visited the vendor tents. We got information about tank gauges, fuel polishing systems, and the Filter Boss by KTI Systems.
Our present setup is as follows; we can carry up to 800 gallons of fuel which is in at least two tanks (I'm not sure how many). Diesel is picked up from the tank, through a Racor 900 filter (one for each engine), to two engine filters and then to the injectors. The idea is to keep dirt and gunk from getting to the injectors.
If there's enough dirt in the fuel, the Racor filter will clog. When it clogs, fuel stops flowing and the engine stops running. This is not only inconvenient, but could potentially be dangerous.
Fuel polishing systems are all well and good. They run and cycle fuel through it's own filter, eventually cleansing the fuel of gunk. But heavy seas could still break off new gunk and clog the filter.
I had read about the Filter Boss before. This is a system of two filters with valves and vacuum gauges. When filter #1 begins to clog, the vacuum gauge indicates the condition and the valve is switched to run on filter #2. The engine keeps on running until filter #1 is changed out. They've added a nice feature to this setup now, an alarm and switch in the helm station. when the filter starts to clog, just flip the switch and a hydraulic lever moves the valve for you.
So I think the immediate answer is a pair of Filter Bosses. If we're clogging too many filters, we'll do a polishing system. Yes, the Filter Boss will also polish fuel, but the paper filters have to be replaced. Some units, such as the RCI Technologies Fuel Purifier, uses a centrifuge and baffles that can be cleaned.
So back to the boat today where I'll do some measuring and planning, and then order the Filter Boss.
One thing you might want to try to running on biodiesel. It will clean your tanks spotless, at the expense of many filters. Used with a scrubbing system, you would be confident your tanks were clean. You would need to pump the fuel out of your tanks and replace it with biodiesel which might be hard to find.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your burn rate at cruise speeds?
I'm not sure of our burn rate, but I'm guessing that it's about five gallons an hour.
ReplyDeleteHow about adding biodiesel to the tank instead of pumping out what's in there?