OCTANE AND CETANE NUMBERS

Self ignition temperature (SIT) of a fuel is the temperature at which the fuel ignites on its own without spark. If large amount of mixture in an engine cylinder auto ignites, there will be a rapid rise in pressure causing direct blow on engine structure accompanied by thudding sound. This causes vibrations in the engine. The phenomenon is called knocking.

If however, a small pocket of fuel-air mixture auto ignites, pressure waves are generated which travel with the speed of sound across the cylinder. These pressure waves are of such small duration that indicator diagram mechanism fails to record them. These waves interact within themselves and with the cylinder walls, creating characteristics ping sound. The phenomenon is called pinking.

The engine runs rough, overheats and loses efficiency due to knocking and pinking.

The processes of knocking and pinking are related to the nature of the fuel and relative merits of the fuel are decided on the basis of their anti-pinking and anti-knock property. The merit is measured by octane number such that a fuel of high octane number will be liable to less pink or knock as compared to a fuel of low octane number in the same engine. It is important to note that the same fuel will show same tendency to pink or knock in all engines.

Commonly used fuel in SI engines is a mixture of iso-octane and n-heptane. Iso-octane has minimum tendency to knock and this fuel is arbitrarily assigned an octane number of 100 (ON = 100) where as n-heptane has maximum knocking tendency with ON = 0. The octane number of a given fuel is percentage of iso-octane in the mixture of iso-octane and n-heptane. Thus a fuel other than mixture of iso-octane and n-heptane if assigned an ON of 80, it means, it will knock under standard operating condition similar to the mixture of 80% iso-octane and 20% n-heptane.

The tendency to knock in an engine increases with the increase in compression ratio. The highest compression upto which no knocking occurs in a given engine is called highest useful compression ratio (HUCR).

Certain chemical compounds when added to the fuel successfully suppress the knocking tendency. Tetra-ethyl lead [Pb(C₂ H₅)₄] also commonly called TEL and tetra-methyl lead [Pb(CH₃)₄] also referred to as TML are effective dopes in the automobile fuel to check knocking. They are called as anti-knocking agents. However, because of lead poisoning effects TEL and TML are not being used now-a-days. In stead, some organic auto knocking agents have been developed to check the undesirable effects like knocking.

In CI engine air alone is compressed to a compression ratio of 15 to 20 (commonly). The fuel is injected under a pressure of 120 to 210 bars about 20° to 35° before TDC. As the fuel in the engine starts to evaporate the pressure in the cylinder drops and it delays the ignition process by a small amount. The time between beginning of injection and the beginning of combustion is known as the delay period which consists of time for atomization, vapourization and mixing along with time of chemical reaction prior to auto-ignition. The combustion of fuel continues in the expansion and is called after burning. Increased delay period causes accumulation of atomized fuel in the combustion chamber and as the pressure and temperature continue to rise at one instant, the bulk of fuel auto-ignites. This would result in high forces on the structure of the engine causing vibration and rough running.

The CI engine fuel rating is based on ignition delay and is measured in terms of cetane number. Cetane fuel [C₁₆ H₃₄] has very low delay period and is arbitrarily assigned a cetane number of 100. Another fuel a α-methyl-napthalene [C₁₁ H₁₀] has poor ignition quality and is assigned zero cetane number. The volume percentage of cetane in a mixture of cetane and a-methyl naphthalene is the cetane number of the fuel that produces same delay period as the mixture under specified test conditions. Additives such as methyl nitrate, ethyl thio-nitrate and amyl nitrate increase cetane number of a fuel respectively by 13.5%, 10% and 9% if added to the extent of 0.5%.