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During 1998, the US Federal authority introduced a requirement for vehicles powered by heavy duty diesel engines that NOx emissions shall be less than 4 g/bhp.h. This represents a 20% reduction over current levels and has prompted significant further hardware changes. As a result of these increasingly tighter NOx emission constraints, soot loading of diesel engine lubricants - due to retarded fuel injection, is becoming an ever more significant issue in crankcase lubricant formulation. For this reason, increased understanding is required of the mechanism of soot particle aggregation and resultant aggregate morphology - together with the likely consequences for the performance of soot-laden lubricants, for viscosity increase, filter blocking, sludging and (directly or indirectly) - soot-induced wear. We describe here a combined experimental and simulation approach to screening formulated lubricants and characterising soot aggregate structures.

Shell was the first oil marketer to bring to commercial scale, Gas to Liquids (GTL) technology for fuels and base oils production. This started with the commissioning of the multi-purpose GTL facility at Bintulu, Malaysia in 1993. The plant produces both automotive gas oil (GTL Fuel) as well as a number of speciality products including detergent feedstocks, a range of Fisher-Tropsch commercial wax grades, and a feedstock for base oils production. The base oil feedstock has been shipped to Shell facilities in Japan and France since 1994 where it is solvent de-waxed to produce the first commercially available GTL base oils. The GTL Fuel is currently being used in premium diesels in Germany, Greece and Thailand. Shell has announced in 2003 its intention to build two world scale GTL trains in Qatar and this will include substantial fuels and base oils facilities.