Real World Fuel Water Separation Performance Mark Wieczorek, Barry Verdegan, Eric Quillen, Cummins Filtration

摘要

Industrial test standards facilitate comparisons of fuel water separator performance for different products under repeatable and reproducible conditions. However, they do not simulate likely field conditions nor do they reflect actual field performance. As a result, these standards do not necessarily provide meaningful differentiation in terms of performance among different products. In the worst case, industrial standards may produce a false sense of security for filter users. These issues are recognized by the filtration industry. Revisions to the standards at SAE and ISO are in process to enable performance assessment under more repeatable and realistic conditions. Despite this, the end of life performance of fuel water separators remains largely ignored. In this paper, the end of life performance of several commercially available fuel water separators was evaluated using the SAE J1488 fuel water separation test method. The separators are representative of filters on the market that exhibit ＞95% efficiency when new. From the results, the importance of considering end of life performance, as well as initial performance, is clear. The results also suggest shortcomings of current industrial test standards for fuel water separator testing and may provide guidance to standards organizations.