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Bio-fuels are being viewed from the multi-dimensional prospective of depleting fossil fuels resources and promoting environmental health, energy security, support to agricultural sector and rural employment. Increased attention is being paid for the use of bio fuels production and their utilization in the transport sector. India being a major agricultural based economy with large scale dependence on imported crude oil will certainly benefit through the increased use of agricultural resources for producing bio fuels which could be blended with motor gasoline and diesel fuel. With high volatility in international oil prices, it is important that we must reduce our dependence on imports of oil for energy security of the country. Based on the success of the pilot projects started earlier with 5 % ethanol in gasoline, Government of India has already decided to blend 5 % of ethanol in gasoline on a commercial scale.

A novel catalytic converter technology for 2 stroke engine application has been successfully developed and tested on select two wheeler vehicles. The catalytic converter uses spherical beads, as catalyst carrier, that is characterised by its very low thermal expansion coefficient and excellent thermal shock resistance. This catalyst carrier is very different from the old fixed bed pelleted catalyst carrier used in the four wheelers in late 1970's and early 1980's, in terms of its: chemical and mineralogical composition microstructure and other physical properties When suitably catalysed and canned, it offers unique advantages over conventional honeycomb catalyst on account of its high conversion efficiency, good durability and easy catalyst replacement/refill capability. The reactor which houses the catalyst bead is so designed that it offers least pressure drop across the converter and negligible power loss at WOT conditions.

Using an indigenous gasoline engine of popular car, Maruti 800 in India, two dynamometer tests, namely Maruti IIID and Maruti IIIE have been developed as an alternate to the standard ASTM Sequence IIID/IIIE tests used for assessing high temperature thickening characteristics of crankcase engine oils. Various changes in engine hardware and operating conditions (blowby, speed/load, air to fuel ratio, ignition time etc) have been incorporated to achieve the adequate level of test severity to discriminate oil of different quality levels. An engine oil of API SF performance level has been used as reference oil for developing the Maruti tests. An attempt has been made to correlate the Maruti IIID/IIIE test with the ASTM Sequence IIID/IIIE test by generating data simultaneously on the Maruti and the ASTM test benches using four commercial engine oils of different performance levels.