The outlook for fuels for internal combustion engines

Abstract

The demand for transport energy is increasing, but this increase is heavily skewed toward heavier fuels such as diesel and jet fuel while the demand for gasoline might decrease. As spark-ignition engines develop to become more efficient, abnormal combustion such as knock and preignition will become more likely. High antiknock quality fuels, those with high research octane number and preferably low motor octane number, will enable future spark-ignition engines to reach their full potential. Higher fuel antiknock quality is also likely to mitigate “superknock” resulting from preignition—an abnormal combustion problem in turbocharged spark-ignition engines. In many parts of the world, fuel antiknock specifications are set on the assumption that higher motor octane number contributes to increased knock resistance. Specifications for fuel antiknock quality have a great impact on fuels manufacture and will need to be revised as this mismatch between existing specifications and engine requirements widens. The primary challenge for diesel engines is to reduce emissions of soot and NOx while maintaining high efficiency, and this becomes much easier if such engines are run on fuels of extremely low cetane. Significant development is needed before such engines can be seen on practical vehicles. In the long term, compression ignition engines are likely to use fuels with research octane number in the range of 70–85 (cetane number<∼30) but with no strict requirements on volatility. Such fuels would require less processing in the refinery than today’s fuels. Such an engine/fuels system will be at least as efficient as today’s diesel engine but could be significantly cheaper and also open a path to mitigate the imbalance in demand growth between heavy and light fuels that is expected to arise otherwise. The review concludes with a possible long-term fuel scenario.