AM-98-52 TRANSPORTATION FUEL COMPOSITION: A 21st CENTURY INSIGHT

Description:

A key factor in future gasoline composition involves sulfur control and some balance between aromatics and oxygenates to maintain quality and meet regulatory requirements. Yet each category will continue to experience limitations and/or problems. Heavy aromatics, as well as sulfur, from cracked components are problematic to both gasoline and diesel fuel. Both alcohols and ethers have experienced set backs in their role as blending agents in reformulated and conventional gasoline. Yet expansion of all fuel reformulation will continue on an international scale as regional air quality problems become more critical. The global fuels exchange now developing will tend to favor an increasingly rapid transition to reformulated fuels. Regardless of politics and disagreement about specifications, long-range, the clean-fuel trends will migrate toward the quality of CARB gasoline and Sweden’s classes of diesel fuel. Alternative fuels and vehicles will play a mixed role well into the next century. Eventually the fuel cell based on gasoline and/or alcohol could be the solution to increasing vehicle mileage and reducing undesirable emissions, as well as carbon dioxide output from highway transportation. The continued movement toward clean fuels with higher-hydrogen content is compatible with future fuelcell requirements.