Anyone familiar with a cleaner/thinner called Petrosin and very similar with kerosene?

Having ran into a brick wall when it comes to purchasing kerosene for tinkering my Petromax clone I have now two viable options:

1. Grill starting fluid which makes an awful smell when burned by the lamp and may cause me to eat cold meals for a while, as my wife cannot stand it.
2. A petroleum product locally called Petrosin (no clue about the English name) which is normally used at cleaning/maintaining wooden floors and is sold in 5 liter tin cans. An elderly relative which used to work in the petrochemical industry swears that this is as close to kerosene as it gets, but he's quite old and I'd rather double-check the info, just to stay on the safe side.

It MAY be also possible to buy the old-style lamp fuel (the one that was actually chemically treated to produce a certain height of flame without smoke) but that is only sold in remote rural areas (distributors getting it straight from the refineries).

So, does anyone know if this Petrosin thing would be safe to use? It is being sold in plastic bottles for small quantities up to 1l so definitely not as flammable as gasoline.

 

@Adrian

I run my lamps and camping stoves on ordinary white spirit ( I am in the UK I do not know what its called in Bucharest) Its the same stuff used to clean paint brushes, and to thin paint. It is a more refined form of kerosine



White spirit (UK) or mineral spirits (US, Canada), also known as mineral turpentine (AU/NZ), turpentine substitute is a petroleum-derived clear liquid used as a common organic solvent in painting.

 

I’d best not contribute to this thread then.

Ok, maybe I will, old fart with failing intellect though I may be.

Web search and a translation from Romanian gives,

 

Sorry if it came across this way, I wasn't questioning his judgement, rather his memory . And wouldn't be doing that if he wasn't telling me stuff that was definitely a bit out of the timeline, so to speak. I know other elderly folks of the same age who remember very clearly even the day when some event happened, sadly it's not his case.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. What is being sold here as "spirt alb" (direct translation of white spirit) is 96% Ethanol . Mineral Turpentine is generally available in painter supply shops but the prices are very high. (like 8 UK pounds per liter) I need to figure out whether the product has another (industrial) name under which it may be sold in bulk at much better prices.

 

WARNING: White Spirit as called in some countries is synthetic turpentine or mineral spirits. BUT in other countries white spirits is pure gasoline or naphtha.

Using common names in an international forum is always fraught.

It is best to find the MSDS (product Material Safety Data Sheet) for the product you want to use and compare it to kerosene.

Jet aircraft use Jet-A (US and parts of Canada) or Jet-A1 (most of the rest of the world). It is kerosene.

Australian context. Jet-A1 is what I use in all my kerosene lamps and stoves if I can get it. Jet-A1 does have an added anti-freeze; Jet-A does not. I add 10% Shellite (naphtha) to Jet-A1 for use in pressure lamps. On the “smell test” (in the drum) I can’t tell the difference between Diggers Household (blue) Kerosene and Jet-A1.

Tony

 

petrosin-A

Name petrosin-a
No material safety data sheet , msds
No info on flamation point
Chemical c30h50o2n2

Looks ver different from kerosene,
Which is c10-c14

More on petrosine
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jo9801768#

 

No, I'm afraid our local Petrosin is not the petrosin-A with chemical formula c30h50o2n2. As Tony said, this is the problem with the commercial names of various substances, they can have wildly different meanings from country to country.

 

In Romania I guess it may be possible to try running it on Țuică.....

 

Hi Adrian

Try a search for, gaz (petrol lampant) because I found that translates to Kerosene in English when I did a search?

Then found some online.

Steve.

 

Nope, actually that's relatively weak (roughly 40% alcohol). The stronger variety is called pălinca (being some sort of a Romanian-Hungarian joint heritage) and is made mostly in Transylvania. The northern parts of the province are the places where it is distilled up to 70% alcohol - well above the cask strength for most Scotch.

I'm not sure that putting it into a Petromax would be a safe idea

Steve, the problem is that the bright minds currently running the country made it impossible to buy kerosene as a private citizen. The variety that was historically sold for use in gas lamps (the one that you mentioned) was a kerosene specifically treated for use in lighting devices (had clear specification about the height of the flame that should produce no smoke, about the lack of smell and so on) and has essentially disappeared from the supply chain.

As I said in the first message, it MAY be possible to buy it if I track the small companies that still buy it from some refineries and sell it in remote rural areas. If it boils down to that, I'll probably get a 20L canister and be done with it for a while.

 

My friend who is from Transylvania always brought back cheese that was kept/matured in tree bark... that was really nice so, please send a gallon or two of pălinca... Seems like I should try it purely for lamp research purposes you understand!

 

Hi Adrian

How strange you cannot buy fuel for a lamp.

I found it here when I looked, do not know the full facts about EMAG stores and if there are any near to you , Cauți gaz (petrol lampant) ? Alege din oferta eMAG.ro

Steve

 

That is extremely costly by my standards.
The real turpentine is a natural product derived from trees, some pine I think. Can be expensive. Mineral turpentine is entirely different and is a petroleum distillate. The latter smells like kerosene and is what we sometimes use.
I don't know what's in Petrosin. It could be the similar to mineral spirits. Aliphatic hydrocarbons is just too general and have a wide range of boiling points. If Petrosin contains 30% of it, then I guess the rest could be aromatic hydrocarbons and other stuffs.
Only way to find out is to buy a bottle and see if it smells and burns like kerosene without being too volatile like gasoline or light naphtha. Kerosene couldn't be set alight with a match if its spilled on a clean, concrete floor.

 

It's not strange at all, that's not kerosene and sadly not even the old style lamp fuel. It is actually some sort of oily product with a yellow color, usable at best for barn lamps.

Even worse, the delivery cost trough emag is 20 lei (local currency) for a 11 Lei bottle. It gets better of course if purchasing larger quantities but at best would bring the cost of a 1L oily smelly crap at about 3 UK pounds when delivered, if purchasing 4 liters.

The actual kerosene is tightly regulated and only sold on airports and so on. The old style lamp fuel (sold with spec sheets and so on) is hard to come by.

 

Actually after much googling trough various local forums it turns out that our local Petrosin should be ... white spirit. Which would end my supply problem in a heartbeat as I have a small hardware shop selling the stuff less then 500m away from my home.
Thanks for the suggestion about testing by attempting to light a small quantity spilled on concrete, that shuld keep the experiment on the safe side

 

An alternative might be to use the fuel used in oil burning boilers for central heating... I don't know what it's called where you live, but anyone who has a large plastic fuel container outside their house that stores fuel for their central heating will know what it is. In the UK it's called 28 second kerosene.







If someone has one of these at their house ask them what they fill it with and use it. It might be slightly more smelly but it'll be the cheapest fuel for your lanterns.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks, I'm not looking for cheapest, just not to pay 3 times the price of gasoline for lamp fuel . Central heating using kerosene is non-existent here, people who are not connected to the national distribution system for natural gas are using either GPL tanks of various sizes or wood pellets.

 

Shame about that. Do you live close to an airport? Jet-A and Jet-A1 are good fuels for both lanterns and stoves.

 

Actually I live quite close to one of Bucharest's airports and even asked to buy from them but stupidly enough they have no legal means of taking payment from private citizens.

However in the meantime I did what I said in the OP and tracked down one of the suppliers who still sell old style lamp fuel in the rural areas. Apparently they buy it directly from the refinery and sell it in 10L plastic bottles. I'm expecting the purchase (2x10L) to be delivered tomorrow.

Btw, it also turned out that our local Petrosin is actually the same thing called in the UK white spirit So my elderly relative was right after all.

 

White spirit or mineral spirits are pretty much the same and would smell similar to kerosene. They'll work.
I'm sure you could get similar stuffs from your local hardware shops.
The proper paint thinner for alkyd paints is basically mineral spirits. They're called just 'turpentine' here in my area, which is a misnomer.
Be careful about paint thinners. There are many types for different paints and lacquers. Those meant for epoxy or polyurethane paints are completely unsuitable. The same goes for those meant for shellacs and some varnishes.
Only mineral spirits qualifies as a substitute for kerosene.

 

@Adrian
Can you pls share info from petrosin label.
The CAS and EG number , to search for the security data sheet.

 

Sorry for the delay, somehow missed the alert and thought there were no other replies.

I ended up purchasing another fuel (specific lamp fuel, only sold here by refineries and small rural supply chains). The number on the label is UN1268 but a google search comes with various results for this number. This is the technical sheet of the product http://kynita.ro/pdf/fisa-tehnica-gaz-lampant.pdf

When I get to a hardware store I will take a photo of the label of the Petrosin product.