Fuel composition and method of formulating a fuel composition to reduce real-world driving cycle particulate emissions

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016108332-A1
Application number	US-201414516627-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Oct 17, 2014
Priority date	Oct 17, 2014
Publication date	Apr 21, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

In order to blend fuels to meet specific regulatory and industry requirements, for instance octane requirements, different octane blending components can be used. One added component includes a composition of higher aromatics content. Unfortunately, this aromatic content may increase the particulate emissions of an internal combustion engine when the high aromatic fuel is combusted in that engine. As explained herein, reducing the aromatics content and replacing that octane increasing requirement with an alternative octane enhancer results in a formulated fuel that will have lower particulate emissions in the real-world driving of that engine as compared with a fuel having higher aromatic content.

First claim

That which is claimed is:

1 . A method of reducing the particulate emission from an internal combustion engine comprising the steps of:
providing a base fuel having an aromatic content of at least about 10% by volume; adding into the base fuel an amount of an octane enhancer to form a fuel formulation, wherein the fuel formation containing the octane enhancer and the base fuel has an aromatic content that is less than the aromatic content of the base fuel without the octane enhancer; wherein (1) the particulate emission from combustion of the fuel formulation as measured by particle number (PN) (both solid and volatiles) is reduced as compared with particulate emission from the combustion of the base fuel, and wherein (2) the octane number of the fuel formulation is substantially the same or higher than the octane number of the base fuel without the octane enhancer.

2 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 1 ,
wherein the aromatic content of the base fuel is at least about 20% by volume.

3 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 1 ,
wherein the aromatic content of the base fuel is at least about 35% by volume.

4 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 1 ,
wherein the fuel formulation further comprises an olefin content of at least about 5% by volume.

5 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 4 , and wherein the fuel formulation comprises an olefin content of at least about 10%.

6 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 1 , wherein the octane enhancer contains an organometallic octane enhancer.

7 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 6 ,
wherein the organometallic octane enhancer comprises manganese, and wherein the amount of the organometallic octane enhancer is enough that the fuel formulation comprises at least 5 ppm by weight per liter of manganese.

8 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 6 ,
wherein the fuel formulation comprises at least 10 ppm by weight per liter of manganese.

9 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 6 ,
wherein the organometallic octane enhancer comprises iron, and wherein the amount of the organometallic octane enhancer is enough that the total spark ignition fuel formulation comprises at least 5 ppm by weight per liter of iron.

10 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 9 ,
wherein the total spark ignition fuel formulation comprises at least 10 ppm by weight per liter of iron.

11 . A method of reducing particulate emission as described in claim 6 , wherein the organometallic octane enhancer comprises methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl.

12 . An internal combustion engine fuel formulation comprising:
a fuel having no more than ppm of sulfur; the fuel having an aromatics content of at least about 20% by volume; an octane enhancer wherein the fuel has a research octane number of at least 85; wherein the T90 of the fuel is at least 140° C.; and wherein the particulate emissions that result from the combustion of the fuel formulation in an engine is reduced as compared with the combustion of a comparable fuel formulation that includes an increased amount of aromatics as a substitute for the octane enhancer.

13 . A method of formulating a spark ignition fuel comprising the steps of:
providing a base fuel that comprises an aromatic content of at least 10% by volume of the base fuel; formulating a finished fuel by adding an additive mixture comprising an octane enhancer, wherein the additive mixture further comprises less than about 2% of aromatic content; wherein, upon combustion of the finished fuel, the particulate emission number is less than the particulate number from the combustion of the base fuel.

14 . The exhaust plume generated by an internal combustion engine comprising:
a solid particle number emission rate of less than about 6×10 12 #/km on the New Europe Driving Cycle and particulate measurement program measurement methodology; wherein the fuel that is combusted in the internal combustion engine that generates the exhaust plume includes an octane enhancer, less than 50 ppm of sulfur, at least 10% by volume of aromatics, and a T90 of at least about 140° C.

Assignees

• Meffert Michael Wayne
• Morris John David
• Roos Joseph W
• Shao Huifang
• Afton Chemical Corp

Inventors

• Meffert Michael Wayne
• Morris John David
• Roos Joseph W
• Shao Huifang

Classifications

• C10L1/04 Primary

  essentially based on blends of hydrocarbons · CPC title

• C10L1/08

  for compression ignition · CPC title

• C10L2200/0227

  Group V metals: V, Nb, Ta, As, Sb, Bi · CPC title

• C10L1/305 Primary

  organo-metallic compounds (containing a metal to carbon bond) · CPC title

• C10L10/10

  for improving the octane number · CPC title