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In response to the demand to lower CO2 emission, all engine developers face the challenge of drastically reducing fuel consumption. At the same time, they will need to meet future exhaust emission legislation by simultaneously employing internal measures and after treatment systems. Additionally, they will have to deal with increasing fuel variability. As different properties can lead to very different behavior in engine operation, information onboard the vehicle providing the fuel composition would allow to adjust engine operating parameters accordingly, to make the most beneficial use of the available fuel quality. This will be obvious considering future diesel fuels blends, or the ever increasing amount of biodiesel content mixed into Diesel fuel, but could already be interesting considering existing fuel variability faced in Europe or America.

Based on their 25 world-wide years experience in refining and fuel formulation using Near Infrared technology, the SP3H team has developed an innovative and miniaturized optical fuel quality sensor. The sensor output is based on an HCP matrix (HydroCarbon Profilers) and provides information on the fine chemistry of fuels such as aromatics, olefins, isoparaffins and oxygenates content and information related to the lengths of the Carbon-Carbon Chain. The goal of this study is to answer the need for new flex-fuel sensors able to provide the rate and the type of oxygenates used in different mixtures of binary and ternary blends of methanol, ethanol and gasoline for the emerging markets. This paper presents the results of the models and the accuracy of the optical sensor for the determination and prediction of Methanol-Ethanol-gasoline mixtures based on the HCP approach.

Tighter CO2 emissions regulations combined with gasoline price increase and oil independency political strategies push to facilitate bio fuels introduction and corresponding flexfuel engines. Bio fuels can be produced from agricultural feedstocks such as corn, wheat, barley, sugar cane, soybean, sunflower and rapeseed for instance. It can also be made from renewable cellulosic materials like jathropa, forestry waste, wood waste, and agricultural residues. Increasing the amount of biofuel in the gasoline or diesel allows to reduce Carbon/Hydrogen rate by substituting Carbon atoms by Oxygen atoms to a maximum limit. Associated with dedicated flexfuel engines and technologies, there is a strong potential to reduce the net carbon dioxide emissions on a vehicle mile basis. A disruptive technology developed since 2004 using a rough optical device is available today.

Car manufacturers today face the dual challenge of remaining competitive while addressing the impact of automotive emissions on the environment. With the emergence of advanced combustion modes, and the growing importance of downsizing along with the rising complexity of after treatment devices, fuel variability is now one of the major constraints that must be addressed for the automotive industry to move forward. Accounting for variability in the properties of commercial fuel blends leads to significant improvements, such as allowing gasoline engine operation closer to the knock limit, adjusting engine tuning based on the fuel engine combination to ensure a better match between performance, emissions and consumption as measured on validation proto fuels and what is generated under real driving conditions. The evaluation of fuel impact on the engine performance showed the limitations of characterizing the fuel variability from the conventional properties.