When was octane discovered

The other aromatics, such as toluene and xylene, are not capped. Early automakers expressed interest in plant-based alcohol fuels, such as ethanol.

Henry Ford designed the first Model T to run on ethanol. But, at the time, gasoline was a much cheaper fuel. During the oil embargo, regular unleaded gasoline prices jumped 57 percent and routine gasoline shortages also occurred. These events, and the regulation of many air pollutants, sparked a renewed interest in fuel efficiency, electric vehicles, and renewable fuels such as ethanol, which were seen as ways to meet the new regulations and reduce petroleum consumption.

Today, the majority of ethanol in the United States is blended with gasoline to produce E10 10 percent ethanol, 90 percent gasoline. Over 95 percent of gasoline sold in the United States is E In addition to having lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gasoline, ethanol is an excellent octane provider, with neat pure ethanol having an octane rating of over Ethanol, which is generally the cheapest octane provider, is then used to bring the octane rating of the gasoline up to the labelled octane value on the gas pump.

For example, 84 octane gasoline is typically blended with 10 percent ethanol to reach the minimum octane requirement of 87 for retail gasoline. Currently, there are two ways of increasing the octane content of gasoline: increasing the volume of gasoline aromatics or increasing the volume of ethanol. While ethanol has a higher volatility than gasoline, meaning it vaporizes more quickly, it is a cleaner-burning alternative to petroleum-based octane boosters.

Additionally, the toxicity of ethanol is low compared to the health effects of BTEX and its combustion products, such as ultrafine particulates UFPs and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAHs.

A modest increase of ethanol content in fuel from 10 to 15 percent would result in an anticipated 6. There is contradictory evidence that increasing ethanol content in gasoline increases nitrous oxide NOX emissions, an ozone precursor.

Several studies find either no relationship between ethanol blending and NOX emissions, or find decreased NOX emissions with increasing ethanol volumes. Other studies suggest older cars emit more NOX when using ethanol blends.

However, a study of make and model year vehicles found no increase in NOX emissions between E10, E15 and E20 blends, suggesting that both engine design and engine age play a role in NOX emissions. Overall, the effect of ethanol on NOX and carbon monoxide CO emissions is minor in newer engine emission control systems.

RFS sets a minimum volume of renewable biofuels to be blended into the transportation fuel supply. Final renewable fuel volumes for are This includes the categories of renewable fuels, cellulosic biofuels, advanced biofuels and biomass-based diesel. Further careful fractional distillations are needed. You can also get octane by the process known as cracking. Maybe, but cracking involves passing the vapour of big molecules over a hot catalyst, which splits them into smaller molecules.

An example of a product produced by cracking is an alkene such as ethene MOTM December ; these reactive molecules are very useful to the chemical industry. Picture of a cracker in Baton Rouge straight out of the Johnny Cash songbook.

Well, isomers are compounds with the same molecular formula but different structures. For example, octane has lots of isomers, like these three, all variants on C 8 H 18 :. So, the term isomerisation means converting one isomer into another one. In the chemical industry this usually means converting a straight-chain octane into an isomer with more branches; these are valuable on account of their higher 'octane ratings'.

First, you have to understand the engines in petrol-fuelled cars. Petrol engines are driven by the combustion of a mixture of a gaseous mixture of air and hydrocarbon fuel.

This mixture is injected into the cylinder as the piston is on its downstroke, then gets compressed as the piston moves up.

At a particular point, a sparking plug fires a spark that ignites the mixture, forming a very hot mixture of carbon dioxide and steam, creating the power that forces the piston down, driving the engine and powering the wheels.

This gave more power, but it was also likely that the fuel-air mixture would pre-ignite, before it was sparked. This was the work of an American chemist called Russell Marker photo, right. Trends of Petroleum Fuels. Topical Report No. Bartlesville, OK: National Inst. Edgar, G.

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Pearce, J. Porter, J. Alcohol as an antiknock agent in automotive engines. Ricardo, H. Rivard, J. Robert, J. Rosner, D. A DNA researcher tells the story of how humans have shaped the evolution of living things on Earth. Site powered by Webvision Cloud. Skip to main content Skip to navigation. Related audio. Book club — Deep Sniff by Adam Zmith. Book club — Lessons from Plants by Beronda Montgomery. Simon Cotton Octane is one of the few chemical names that is part of everyday life and is recognised by the public.

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