LW-99-132 NEW EMISSIONS REGULATIONS – IMPACT ON ENGINE DESIGN AND OIL FORMULATION

Description:

For the past eleven years changes in heavy-duty diesel engine emission limits have driven changes in engine design. In turn, these changes in engine design have made the service environment of the engine lubricant more severe and necessitated the development of increasingly higher quality heavy-duty oils. This paper will review the historical co-evolution of emissions limits, engines, and lubricants as a background to what may be the most dramatic change in emissions control technology yet considered. This new technology is exhaust gas re-circulation (EGR), and although it offers the possibility of allowing diesel engines to reach significantly lower levels of exhaust emissions; it also brings with it an array of new concerns and potential problems. A new API performance category , which is currently known as PC-9, is being developed to meet the lubrication needs of these EGR- equipped engines. This paper will provide an overview of the early development status of this new category along with a description of the new engine tests being considered. Although none of these new tests are yet available for new product development, some very preliminary data points are available using CH-4 quality oils in the new tests. A quick review of these results will be contrasted against the known performance of these products in the current CH-4 tests. By extrapolating these results from specific tests to general performance needs, this paper will finally predict the probable implications of these tests on the formulation requirements of PC-9 quality lubricants.