Fuel TANK MAINTENANCE is a vital necessity to successful fuel storage. It's needed to ensure that the fuel doesn't go "bad", making the investment in the stored amount go to waste. Secondly, also to ensure that "dirty fuel" which is contaminated, is not added to the fleet or to equipment. Consequently it may cause costly equipment damages and poor performance.

What happens to the fuel in the fuel tank?

Both gas and diesel experience the same issues when being stored in fuel tanks for medium-long term. Even when the fuel tank is emptied and refilled in a short term, a well known storage fact is that 3% of the tank volume never actually exchanges, that means about 120 gallons in a 4,000 gallon fuel tank per refill. This results in good, fresh fuel being mixed with older, stale "bad" fuel thus reducing overall performance. But that's not all.

Let's take diesel for example today:

Besides the fuel tank volume that never actually gets exchanged, diesel also can carry 0.01% by weight of water. That translates into an extra 10 gallons of water in the tank PER EACH refueling of the storage tank.
Also a fuel tank will never hold a 100% of its capacity all the time. This leaves a gap between the fuel and the tank wall where air is present. Consequently, due to temperature differences between the inside of the tank and the outside, condensation appears.
This adds ever more to the water surplus in the fuel tank. In addition it can enable forming of rust on the tank walls and microbial/algae formations in the fuel tank.

At a first glance, the fuel inside a tank can have its performance drastically reduced because of having stale fuel in the mix, water, rust or microbial/algae formations.

Can you imagine adding such a fuel to your car or equipment?

You use fuel from fuel tanks and never had a problem. How come?

This is where fuel tank maintenance kicks in. Together with these tanks come some serious filtering power given by fuel filters. These are designed to keep all the bad elements out of your fine tuned engine or equipment.
However fuel filters cannot take on all of the above mentioned and still generate satisfactory results. Fuel performance can be seriously degraded by the water or other formations in the tank, even if it's filtered. Also some elements will manage to escape the filter and end up in your fuel lines . Therefore causing issues or even worse, more complicated and costly problems, like permanently plugging or clogging fuel injectors.

Thankfully there is a way to make all these disappear and benefit from clean and "healthy" fuel. The right fuel additives are the secret weapon used in all fuel tank maintenance procedures and actually deliver outstanding results.