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business in the areas of fuel polishing and
tank cleaning by partnering with Clean
Fuels Associates, a Maryland-based com-
pany that has a New Hampshire office and
is rapidly expanding its Northeast locations
and services.
Clean Fuels partners with retailers to
provide fuel cleaning and tank cleaning
for their clients, according to Sam Estill,
Director of Operations. Companies can
arrange compliance-related fuel services
for select commercial clients to help them
meet the requirements of National Fire
Protection Association (NFPA) 110, which
is the standard for emergency and standby
power systems.
NFPA 110 imposes requirements on
stored fuel at both public and private
facilities that are mandated to maintain
emergency backup power systems. These
include hospitals, nursing homes, parking
garages and other facilities where emergency
exit and life safety are mission critical. The
standard imposes maintenance rules for the
backup systems themselves and also for the
fuel they use. “Generators covered by NFPA
110 that use diesel are required to maintain
fuel that meets the ASTM D 975 standard
for diesel,” said Chief Compliance Officer
David Bishop
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To meet the fuel quality standard,
operators are required to test the diesel once
a year and certify that it meets the ASTM
specification. Clean Fuels provides NFPA
fuel testing directly for its own clients and
also for customers of its fuel delivery clients.
ates filtration systems in different sizes for
different tank sizes with flow rates ranging
from 10 gallons per minute to 250 gallons
per minute. There is no downtime for the
tank, and cleaning a 10,000-gallon tank
could take one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half
hours.
To clean the contents of a tank, the
operator inserts a long, flexible wand into
the tank through the top and other open-
ings to draw fuel from the bottom of the
tank. “We pull from the lowest end of the
tank first. It’s the business end of the tank
cleaning process,” Estill explained. “We
pull the fuel through sediment filters and
oil/water separators on our dual canister
system. It could take fuel a total of 25 sec-
onds to circulate through the hose, filtration
system and back into the tank.
“Failing to remove the dead bodies of
bacteria can cause more problems for the
tank itself than the live bacteria,” he added.
“This is often overlooked by tank owners
when they utilize a treatment or biocide
throughout the year. We use a biocide at
time of service so we can kill all microbes,
and then polish the entire tank and fuel so
we can guarantee complete removal of all
foreign matter.”
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The increased blending of ethanol in
gasoline has been a business driver for Clean
Fuels, because ethanol blends cause tank
problems, according to Estill. The ethanol
bonds with water and settles to the bottom
of the tank, where it causes corrosion.
Diesel and heating oil have similar
problems, because water forms inside the
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Estill recommends that compliance sites be
scheduled for annual service.
The company also serves fuel customers
of all types and sizes with fuel and tank
cleaning that are unrelated to compliance.
Estill said customers include fuel terminals,
service stations, boat owners, generator
owners and anyone else who stores fuel.
“We clean all sizes of tank from 30 gallons
to 3 million gallons,” he said. Clean Fuels
responds to emergency calls and also pro-
vides preventive maintenance services.
Clean Fuels cleans diesel fuel by
removing it from the tank and circulating
it through a filtration system for about 25
seconds before returning it to the tank,
minus the sediment and impurities that
are removed. “It’s like kidney dialysis for
fuel,” Estill explained. The company oper-
Fuel Quality
