Publication
21 Oct 1998

Opportunities and costs to upgrade the quality of automotive diesel fuel

Report no. 88/52: The results of last year's study of opportunities and costs to upgrade quality of automotive diesel fuel in the EEC were included in CONCAWE Report No. 10187 "Diesel fuel quality and its relationship with emissions from diesel engines". The purpose of the present report is to record the full study. This investigates three classes of processing options and one non-processing alternative to improve diesel fuel cetane number.

The routes described are selective blending of distillate pool components;processing causing significant yield change, e.g. hydrocracking,solvent extraction; hydrogenation with little or no yield change;and use of cetane number improving additives. It is concluded that hydrogenation would be the only processing option suitable to provide significant cetane number increase. It would be capital.intensive, whereas the alternative of using additives would be less expensive and more flexible. Such additives could not change other parameters like density and aromaticity.

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