What is distillate fuel?

I am new to tractors so please forgive my ignorance. I have been looking at tractor books I borrowed from my local library. I know what gasoline and diesel fuel is, but what is "distillate" fuel and what is "tractor fuel" and what is the differences?

Thanks for any help.

Technically all fuels and oils are products of distillation and so could be termed distillates.

In the 20s and 30s there was an oily fuel called distillate that was cheaper than gasoline but ran in a carbureted engine once it was warmed up. So tractors were called dual fuel, with a small tank for gasoline for warming up (and shutting down) and distallate for working. It probably was a blend, a bit more volatile than true kerosene or diesel fuel, but not as volatile as gasoline (engines using it also had heated intake manifolds). Its main feature was that it was cheaper than gasoline.

When refineries learned to do catalytic cracking to produce more volatile products from heavier fractions distillate disappeared from the market place being more valuable cracked into gasoline and other things.

Gerald J.

it is basicially anything that isnt diesal or gasoline.I understand that it is a mixtire of distilling by-products

And an all fuel tractor is a tractor that runs on distillate.

It has a little 1 gallon or so gas tank. You start the tractor on gas and let it warm up, and then you turn the gas off and the distillate on.

One more thing-Welcome to YT

a lot of people get distillate mixed up with kerosene, but the posters above did a good job of explaining what it is.

Easy way to say it is this. It was a by product of making gas and diesel and even kerosene. It was the left overs but still would burn if the engine was warm enough and cost penny's for what you got. It was the crudest or the crude but it also cost about half or what a gal. of gas did and back the gas was cheap but it was even cheaper. Its not something you can buy now days but if it was it would probably still be $2 or $3 a gal.
Hobby farm

Lost its identity in this age,Just another name for diesel now.

I saw a old ferry boat engine that ran on something called bunker fuel. It had the viscosity of tar, by looking at it. They had a preheater for that fuel.

I believe distillate refers to that which is 'boiled off' (distilled). It would probably be done under reduced pressure to lower the boiling points, but that is by-the-by.

The opposite is a residual fuel. One that may have had some parts distilled off and that is what is left.

It will contain higher amounts of tars, ash, sulphur and other impurities as far as the average modern engine is concerned. It can be used in certain types of engines which are designed for this fuel, but is often just burned for the energy content.

Distillate fuels can have wide range of different fractions, flash-points, viscosity etc. Most fuels are probably distillates - even petrol might be regarded as of this type, except it is probably produced by 'cracking' not by distillation (a subtle difference of chemical change but the similar molecule chain-length result).

The petrologists, or whatever they were/are called, simply used the terms generically and the end-users eventually picked up on their particular fraction (molecule size range, basically) and assumed that is what it was called for simplicity.

Distillate fuel was a cheaper alternative fuel to kerosene (which was probably a 'cracked' fuel).

I'm not an oil expert, but that is my view of the subject.

Regards, RAB

Here in western NY, "Distllate" is the liquid that condenses from the natural gas coming out of the gas well.
If you know the right people you can buy it real cheap, most won't sell it, they use it for tractors, generators etc..
It's like a low grade gasoline, but stinks real bad. I ran my Ford 8N on it for a couple of years, ran fine but not as much power as regular gas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillate_fuel