India’s armed forces may soon be using winter diesel for operations in high altitude areas such as Ladakh, where winter temperatures plummet to extremely low as -30° Celsius.

This year BS-VI compliant fuel was in news. Try differentiating the Winter Diesel with the BS-VI fuel.

What is Winter Diesel?

• Winter diesel is a specialised fuel that was introduced by Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. last year specifically for high altitude regions and low-temperature regions such as Ladakh, where ordinary diesel can become unusable.
• The flow characteristics of regular diesel change at such low temperatures and using it may be detrimental to vehicles.
• Winter diesel which contains additives to maintain lower viscosity can be used in temperatures as low as -30°C and that besides a low pour point, it had higher cetane rating — an indicator is the combustion speed of diesel and compression needed for ignition.
• It has lower sulphur content, which would lead to lower deposits in engines and better performance.

Back2Basics: BS-VI fuel

• Sulphur content in fuel is a major cause for concern. Sulphur dioxide released by fuel burning is a major pollutant that affects health as well.
• BS-VI fuel’s sulphur content is much lower than BS-IV fuel.
  It is reduced to 10 mg/kg max in BS-VI from 50 mg/kg under BS-IV.

This reduction makes it possible to equip vehicles with better catalytic converters that capture pollutants. However, BS-VI fuel is expected to be costlier that BS-IV fuel.

With inputs from:

[pib] Winter-grade diesel

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