A blending rule for octane numbers of PRFs and TPRFs with ethanol

CATEGORY: BLENDING: OCTANE NUMBERS 
A blending rule for octane numbers of PRFs and TPRFs with ethanol

Type	Journal Article
Author	Abdullah S. AlRamadan
Author	S. Mani Sarathy
URL	http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016236116301880
Volume	180
Pages	175-186
Publication	Fuel
Date	September 15, 2016
Journal Abbr	Fuel
Abstract	Ethanol is used as an octane booster in commercial gasoline fuels. Its oxygenated nature aids in reducing harmful emissions such as nitric oxides (NOx), soot and unburned hydrocarbons (HC). However, the non-linear octane response of ethanol blending with gasoline fuels is not well understood because of the unknown intermolecular interactions in such blends. In general, when ethanol is blended with gasoline, the Research Octane Number (RON) and the Motor Octane Number (MON) non-linearly increase (synergistic) or decrease (antagonistic), and the non-linearity depends on the composition of the base gasoline. The complexity of commercial gasoline makes it difficult to understand ethanol–gasoline synergistic/antagonistic blending effects. Understanding ethanol blending effects with simpler gasoline surrogates blends may provide a better understanding of ethanol blending with complex multi-component gasoline fuels. Authors present a blending rule to predict the octane numbers (ON) of ethanol/primary reference fuel (PRF; mixtures of iso-octane and n-heptane) and ethanol/toluene primary reference fuel (TPRF; mixtures of toluene, iso-octane and n-heptane) mixtures using the data available in literature and new data.