Research Of Octane Number Test Of Methanol Gasoline

Petroleum shortage and environment pollution are two great troubles confront with road traffic field. An ideal way to solve these problems is developing new energy source. Methanol fuel has a preferable alternative for gasoline and has plenty of advantages, such as rich source, low cost, little emissions, etc. At present, methanol gasoline of low methanol percentage has a wide use in most areas of China. At the same time, methanol gasoline of high methanol percentage has been used in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Shanghai, Gansu and Guizhou Province in the national pilot project organized by Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China. It has already gained some impressive results.The research method octane number(RON) of pure methanol is around 110. At present, for the sake of ensure quality, most of methanol gasoline products in the market are blended with refined gasoline. Thus, the octane number of methanol gasoline is much higher, which caused a waste of high octane number components. Since the mid 2014, petroleum price has declined dramatically, resulting in the lack of price advantage of methanol gasoline when compared with gasoline products, which also has a negative effect on generalize of methanol gasoline. Besides, literatures also indicate that it would increases fuel consumption and emissions if octane number of spark-ignition engine fuel is too high, which goes against with the target of energy conservation and emission reduction.[1] Based on the 3 reasons mentioned above, the author of this paper does not agree with blending methanol gasoline with refined gasoline products.Thus, in order to research the octane number of methanol gasoline, we tested research and motor octane numbers(RON and MON) of methanol gasoline blended in different percentage. For methanol gasoline samples which have an octane number over 100, we used toluene blending fuels as reference fuels to test them. Based on the test results of octane number, we fitted them with several different octane number blending models. The fitting results indicate that with the increase of methanol percentage, its octane number also increases, while the increasing rates decline gradually. This result has some value for predicting octane number of methanol gasoline, researching new formula, reducing production cost, decreasing emissions and promoting methanol gasoline.We also researched the effect of octane number(ON) and compression ratio(CR) on engine performance and emission level when using methanol gasoline. The result shows that with the increase of ON and CR, engine performance and emission level appears to improve at first, but then gets worse in the end generally. It cannot always improve engine performance and emission level by enhance ON and CR. However, engine optimization design is benefit to burn methanol gasoline.