Where to buy contaminated petrol/diesel mix?

Having had to deal with a Diesel vehicle with petrol in the tank I was curious what the garage did with the mess they drained from the system, apparently it's controlled waste along with sump oil, hydraulic fluid etc, so they have to get it collected by a licensed contractor. If they gave/sold it to anyone unlicensed they could be be in deep s*1t with the authorities. Greg

I think you'll find that legally you need to be a licenced collector or somesuch. It probably won't remove the possibility of finding such fuel but it will almost certainly limit supplies to some extent. Every garage owner would be wise to have documentation showing that they have sent fuel to a licenced facility.

Yes I'd suspected that any old nut job turning up with a water bowser would get short shrift, but what I'm not so sure about is how far the chain does that go, what I'd heard previously is that those who do the collecting can deliver it in large quantities, which of course immediately begs the questions about storing it, does it come under diesel rules or petrol rules etc. But if they can deliver then it suggests some legitimacy, although what hoops I might have to jump through aren't yet clear. I'd expect it's going to be complicated. Worth finding out though.

Hopefully some others might have found out some more too, so if anyone has any info please pipe up. I'll ask at some garages today, and there's a commercial recycling plant who deal with petrol/diesel disposal in a nearby town, I've been there before trying to get rid of

60 litres of 5-year-old petrol. The difficulty there is trying to speak to people who know rather than guess, getting past the yard man to find someone who knows the legal situation might be hard.

Give your 5 year old petrol to Lee D - his Fergy tractor will happily run on it (or a 50/50 mix with new stuff).

Not exactly over-helpful, but the AA/RAC/etc have the ability to dispose of mixed fuel, and I'm sure I read (possibly on this grup) that someone was getting hold of it from them for their mixed-fuel tank. Mind, even it you can get it, there's all sort of daft rules about storage now - something like 10L at home or something.

Richard

park the pinz out at the front of the house and wait for someone to knock on your door and see if you want any ;)

when i had the 101 and about 5 landies parked out front of my old house we got a couple of visits from local petrol station and garage owners asking if we would like any of it as they couldnt get rid of it.

Or just go and ask at all your local places and say you will take it off their hands.

Surely 5 year old petrol would be as volatile as petrol/diesel mix? Why not use it in the Pinz anyway?

Martin

OK I'll add them to the list of organisations to be probed.

Getting the right stamps is likely to be the real idea-killer, I know that the rules for petrol, which I think limit you to 10 litres, are very strict while the rules for diesel are very lax, but chances are that the rules for diesel/petrol mix are probably just the rules for petrol, what's the bets that a 1,000 litre container of 50/50 split would be regarded legally as 500 litres of diesel and 500 litres of petrol with no regard to whether the mix is actually as dangerous or not.. (I have no idea if it is or isn't)

The pinz would happily run on it too but at the time of getting shot of it I had no running petrol cars and no-one wanted 60 litres of free petrol.. I'm sure it would have been fine, at least 50/50 mixed with fresh.

I feel an experiment coming on.

Pass the matches ;)

On a more serious note we had a nasty welding accident near here some years back. A small percentage of petrol in a tractor diesel tank caused rather a big bang. So sadly I suspect that a mix isn't much less dangerous than straight petrol when things go critical.

I didn't have the pinz at the time, otherwise it would have gone straight in. It was high octane stuff too, drained from the dormant lotus's tanks, IIRC as petrol ages it goes down in octane so that might have reached the level of tesco fuel ;-)

I called the council, they had no facilities to get rid of it, I tried the petrol/oil disposal depot but they only took it from commercial organisations and not even the car sales place next door wanted it for their older workhorses, so there was no way to get rid of it that I could find without asking favours. A local garage took it in the end and poured it into their underground storage tanks, reasoning that even if it wasn't much use it'd be diluted in with the fresh.

In fact one of the biggest worries with the idea of using petrol/diesel mix is that if it doesn't work out, I'll have to figure out a way to dispose of large quantities of fuel that no-one wants!

I think the neighbours would kill me if I did that! I'll be doing the rounds of the local garages to see what they say, one of them is owned by a chap who isn't quite so hung up on legislation as many are, he might be a good bet but having dealt with him in the past he'll also most likely want to charge *me* and probably 10p below pump prices...

I doubt it's legal under the waste regulations but I know a chap with a multifuel engined 434 that has a standing arrangement with his local RAC/AA patrols. I'm sure it is a valid use but probably requires an exemption certificate.

I've recovered a vehicle with diesel in the petrol tank, an old Volvo with a petrol tank drain plug, the garage wanted 300quid, I removed

50litres, flushed the system and sent him on his way. I then used the petrol mix at 10% dilution in an old tractor.

AJH

IMO and IME ( I had previously had no excitement cutting a 205ltr drum that had contained gas oil....) a mixture of petrol and diesel or a container that has held them is as bad a hazard as if it were just petrol, I think this is because the vapour pressure of the petrol in the mix will remain the same.

AJH

A failure to supply results will be regarded as a result in itself ;-)

Possibly, although you could probably ignite straight diesel with a welding torch! IIRC the reason diesel is regarded as safer is because it's *harder* to ignite but mainly it's the lack of explosive vapour.

But no, I wouldn't be surprised if the petrol was the detonator with the diesel as the main charge..

I didn't see your post until I'd sent mine, I agree. In my case I was making some burners from 205ltr oil drums that I'd used for taking red diesel to the tractors. I'd become blase about this and no longer purged them with water first and had had no problems. I forgot I'd used one to dilute some contaminated petrol and when I set the grinder into this it mildly exploded and chased me across the barn with a jet of blue flame coming out of the plug hole.

AJH

Sorry I couldn't help laughing at "it mildly exploded" ;)

It wasn't spectacular, similar to popping a tubeless trailer tyre on with propane, but the premixed flame did singe my arm.

AJH

Yes but the petrol needs a spark whereas diesel just needs mild heat, think about it this is why they're chosen for the different engines, petrol needs to resist burning until it is precisely sparked off whereas diesel needs to tart burning as soon as it hits the hot air. The differences are in auto ignition temperature and flash point.

I've had some fairly spectacular illustrations of this, on my wife's MGB a petrol hose slipped off one SU, engine stayed running and the exhaust manifold was covered in vapourising petrol, no spark=no flame= no damage. Whereas I was operating a tree spade when a hydraulic pipe burst and sprayed the exhaust pipe of the V8 petrol GMC truck it was all mounted on, the low viscosity oil instantly burst into flame and required use of the fire extinguisher.

AJH