Faulty-fuel issue heats up in Cape Dorset

Heating fuel deposits clog furnace nozzles, NPC generators

By NUNATSIAQ NEWS

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

CAPE DORSET — The new gasoline supply delivered to Baffin and Kivalliq communities this past summer was supposed to mark the end of fuel troubles in Nunavut, but in Cape Dorset, they’re getting worse.

This time the issue is heating fuel.

Mike Perry, the director of housing and public buildings for the Cape Dorset Housing Authority, started noticing a problem in November, when winter set in.

The housing authority generally receives about two or three after-hours service calls a week. But since November, about 10 people each week have been calling to report furnace trouble.

Technicians saw the same symptoms in each of the furnaces they examined — a glob of black gunk on the end of the fuel nozzle.

Even worse, after completely cleaning a furnace, they’d get another call from the same house about two weeks later.

In the past couple of months, Perry said, the housing authority has received more than 100 calls.

Cleaning or replacing a fuel nozzle, which is about the size of a wine cork, is not a difficult task. None of the housing authority’s clients have gone without heat or hot water for very long.

But that’s not the issue, Perry said. The labour costs involved in the biweekly maintenance of the authority’s 400 units are substantial. In addition, lack of heat during an Arctic winter — for any amount of time — is a risk that residents simply should not have to take.

Heat and hot water aren’t the only necessities Cape Dorset residents have had to go without. The fuel troubles have also affected the community’s supply of electricity.

The build-up of carbon on the filters of the three systems that supply power to the community has forced the two employees of the Nunavut Power Corporation’s Cape Dorset office to replace the filters each week.

“That’s a lengthy job,” said superintendent Bob Kenneally.

Before they started their weekly routine, the community had been experiencing a blackout at least once every 10 days.

Kenneally and his colleague, Steve Weedmark, the plant operator, have noticed a distinct difference in this year’s heating fuel supply.

Heating fuel is essentially diesel, but when it’s used in furnaces it carries a different name and price. As heating fuel, it is known as P-50 or DFA, which stands for Diesel Fuel Arctic.

The fuel is generally clear, smells like oil and is dry to the touch.

But the current supply, Kenneally said, “doesn’t feel or smell like regular fuel.”

Instead, it smells like varsol and has the feel of lubricant or wax, he said.

They suspect it hasn’t been formulated for Arctic temperatures. DFA is supposed to contain an anti-gelling agent that keeps it from crystallizing. Regular diesel fuel will crystallize at -40 ° C.

Fuel that is properly formulated for the Arctic won’t crystallize at any temperature.

But the heating fuel in Cape Dorset is not only crystallizing — it’s causing clumps. Regular fuel comes out of the nozzle as a fine mist, the housing authority’s Perry said. But technicians at the organization have found droplets inside some of the chambers, which means the fuel is not atomizing, or forming a mist.

“It’s not bad fuel, it’s just not Arctic fuel,” NPC’s Weedmark said. “It would probably burn fine down South.”

The problem is no one knows for sure. So Kenneally and Weedmark sent eight samples to two separate testing locations, including the Alberta Research Council, which tested the 2001 gasoline supply for the Nunavut government.

The results were due back late this week, after Nunatsiaq News’ press deadline.

The test results will likely also go to the GN’s department of public works, which purchased the fuel on behalf of the hamlet. The fuel was supplied by the Northern Transportation Company Ltd., under the last year of its contract with the GN.

However, the NPC has not reported problems in any other community in Nunavut.

NTCL supplied the gasoline that caused snowmobiles and other two-stroke engines to break down last year. The Alberta Research Council determined the gas was missing a crucial additive that prevents deposits from building up on carburetors and pistons.

The GN then embarked on a multi-million-dollar payout to snowmobile owners whose machines were damaged by the bad gas.

But if there’s something they can do to prevent the build-up, Kenneally and Weedmark said, they’d be happy to do it.

“We don’t want compensation, we just want the stuff to work,” Weedmark said.

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