CLIAMS:We Claim:

1. A device 100 for assisting fuel filtration, said device 100 comprising:
a housing 102 having an inlet path 104 and an outlet path 106, fuel entering said inlet path 104 from a fuel reservoir 108 , characterized in that
said housing 102 containing at least one partition, said partition adapted to store an agglomerating compound, wherein the movement of said fuel through said at least one partition agglomerates particulates present in said fuel, before supplying said fuel to a fuel filter through said outlet path 106.
2. The device 100 of claim 1, wherein said agglomerating compound is a polyelectrolyte.
3. The device 100 of claim 2, wherein said polyelectrolyte is made up of a combination comprising a cationic polyelectrolyte, an anionic polyelectrolyte and a non-ionic polyelectrolyte.
,TagSPECI:Field of the invention
[001] This invention relates to a device for assisting fuel filtration.

Background of the invention
[002] A fuel filter is used to remove particulates and impurities present in the fuel, before the fuel is supplied to the injection pump. Fuel filters that are currently available purify particulates present in the fuel up to a certain dimension. During the passage of the fuel across the fuel filter it is observed that certain particulates present in the filter, pass through the filter because of their extremely small size. These particulates then enter the engine through the injection pump, causing damage to the components of the engine. Hence there is a need to stop these particulates at the fuel filter itself.
[003] Prior art patent US5149433 discloses a fuel filtering system and a method of filtering fuel for a diesel engine. A series of two spiral wound ultra filtration filters are used to process diesel fuel circulating from a fuel tank to the fuel injector line of the diesel engine. Each of the filters has a membrane which blocks passage of the solid particles, water and bacteria contaminants while passing through the uncontaminated fuel.

Brief description of the accompanying drawings
[004] Different modes of the invention are disclosed in detail in the description and illustrated in the accompanying drawing:
[005] FIG. 1 illustrates a device for assisting fuel filtration.

Detailed description of the embodiments
[006] FIG. 1 illustrates a device 100 for assisting fuel filtration. The device 100 comprises a housing 102 having an inlet path 104 and an outlet path 106. The fuel enters the inlet path 104 from a fuel reservoir 108. The housing 102 contains at least one partition, the partition is adapted to store an agglomerating compound. The movement of the fuel through the partition agglomerates the particulates present in the fuel, before supplying the fuel to a fuel filter 110 through the outlet path 106. This happens because the fuel comes into contact with the agglomerating compound that is present within the housing 102.
[007] In an embodiment the agglomerating compound may be a polyelectrolyte. The polyelectrolyte is made up of a combination comprising a cationic polyelectrolyte, an anionic polyelectrolyte and a non-ionic polyelectrolyte. The function of the polyelectrolyte is to work as an aggregator. That is, as the fuel containing particulates enters the housing 102, the polyelectrolyte attracts the particulates present in the fuel, aggregates these particulates to a size that can be filtered further, when the fuel passes through the fuel filter 110. The polyelectrolyte may be located in the partition along the axis of the housing 102, so that path of flow of fuel within the housing 102, causes the particulates present in the fuel to interact with the polyelectrolyte. Additionally the polyelectrolyte may also be located along the inner walls of the housing 102.
[008] The polyelectrolyte thus helps in increasing the size of particulates within the housing 102 itself, so that they do not pass through the fuel filter 110 and reach the injection pump. The use of polyelectrolyte helps in filtering particulates present in the fuel having mean size approximately less than 4-5µm. Hence the particulates that would normally pass through existing pre-filtering process would get trapped with the use of agglomerating compound.
[009] In an embodiment the housing 102 may be integrated with the fuel filter 110. The housing 102 may also be made separate from the fuel filter 110, by connecting the outlet path 106 of the housing 102 with the fuel filter 110. The process of agglomeration results in conversion of particulates into particulates of a larger size that can be easily blocked by the fuel filter. The agglomerating compound thus functions as a supplement to pre filter, before supplying the fuel to the fuel filter 110.
[0010] For better understanding of the device for assisting fuel filtration, we consider the following example. The fuel stored in the fuel reservoir 108 is supplied to the housing 102 through the inlet path 104. As the fuel enters the housing 102, the fuel contacts the agglomerating compound i.e.the polyelctrolyte, present within the housing 102. For the purposes of this example we consider that the sizes of the particulates are lower than 4 µm and the need is to increase the size of the particulates to 4-5 µm. At this stage the particulates present in the fuel are brought together resulting in agglomeration. The use of polyelectrolyte helps in filtering particulates present in the fuel having size approximately less than 4-5µm. Hence the particulates that would normally pass through existing pre-filtering process would get trapped with the use of agglomerating compound. The fuel is then supplied to the fuel filter 110 along with the agglomerated particulates. Since the overall size of the agglomerated particulates is larger than that of the individual particulates, it is now easier for the fuel filter to filter out the agglomerated particulates. Therefore, the fuel that is supplied to the injection pump is devoid of any particulates.
[0011] It should be understood that embodiments explained in the description above are only illustrative and do not limit the scope of this invention in terms of the size of the agglomerated particles and the size and shape of the partition in which the agglomerating compound is located. Many such embodiments and other modifications and changes in the embodiment explained in the description are envisaged. The scope of the invention is only limited by the scope of the claims.