FUEL ADDITIVES AND THEIR APPLICATION IN ENGINES USING BIOFUELS

During the last two decades great strides have been taken by the European parliament, in consultation with oil companies and car manufacturers, to improve air quality within the European union. Air quality improvements have mostly been achieved by the publication of vehicle emissions directives forcing car manufacturers to design more efficient vehicle technology. These vehicles can only operate to their design specification when appropriate quality fuels are available and this has led to publication of the fuels quality directives and the implementation of stringent diesel and gasoline fuel specifications. In addition fuel producers and retailers have the added challenge of the biofuels directive leading to the need to incorporate FAME and ethanol into commercial diesel fuel and commercial gasoline respectively. There has been a stepwise increase in biofuel use in Europe driven by the bio-fuels directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources. The share of energy from renewable resources is planned to rise to a minimum 20% in every member state by 2020 with a 10% renewable contribution to transportation energy consumption. The introduction of biofuels together with modern direct injection engine technology has led to a number of concerns related to efficient vehicle operation. These modern engines are very sensitive to deposits and bio-fuels are known to have a greater propensity to produce deposits than fossil fuel. As a consequence, in cooperation with automobile manufacturers and industry bodies investigations are performed in order to ensure that biofuels are fit for purpose and allow vehicles to operate to their design specification. In this paper we will discuss the methodologies used in these investigations and data generated which highlights the benefits of using gasoline and diesel performance additives in modern vehicles operating on today’s fuel quality