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Jed Talbot

Jed Talbot

Lead chemist at Howes Products, a diesel fuel treatment maker, who led a study revealing wide variance in U.S. diesel fuel quality.

Sep 29, 2026

8:42
So that was kind of the genesis for all of this.
8:46
what every pump gets, what every station gets is going to come from a slew of different refiners around the country.
8:57
And every refiner is going to do the processes that are profitable for them, not necessarily best for a consumer.
9:06
So you end up seeing a lot of variation in terms of quality of, you know, lubricity, whether or not bio blends are in it.
9:20
And certainly in the winter months, you know, how effective the minimum anti-gel that they've put in, if any.
9:30
And so, You don't know.
9:33
I mean, even the same station, you know, week after week, month after month might have a different delivery.
10:41
And then also Manitoba, Canada.
9:21
Can you tell us the difference between the two and why cetane numbers matter for diesel?
9:27
Well, briefly, they're almost inversely proportional.
9:33
Octane is a rating of what percent of the fuel is octane.
9:38
It's really a measure of the fuel itself.
9:41
Whereas cetane number, that is not an arbitrary, but a calculated measurement against a certain combination of fuel chemicals to give some relative measure of how this fuel does against that fuel or against this standard combination of chemicals.
10:06
what they're measuring are totally different.
10:08
That's, I mean, the big thing, uh, the CTA number relates to how, uh, how combustible a fuel is, a diesel fuel.
14:35
There are no standards?

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