Australia: How "Clean" is our Fuel?

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Just something that bears asking, I often read the U.S. posters discuss Top-Tier vs. regular fuels and wonder whether Australian fuels are regulated to be cleaner (i.e. additional cleaning additives) in the first place, or if the fuel we have is equivalent to non-TT in the States.

Or is it something different again, where the name-brand chains (Shell, Caltex, BP, Puma & Mobil) are top-tier, and the small family-run stations (of which there are very few these days) are just regular?

Being from the West of Australia, 90% of our fuel comes from a single refinery plant run by BP... So that throws something else (again) into the equation.
 
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Australia follows the UN ECE standard. I believe since 2008, there has been a 50 ppm limit (Euro IV) on sulfur for gasoline, down from 150 ppm (Euro III) in 2005. Could be down to 10 ppm (Euro V) now, not sure.

Although the U.S. EPA was the first to set detergent requirements for fuel (in '95 IIRC), the Europeans are definitely up there. ACEA raises their recommendations through the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) for directives/mandates, and European manufacturers have set mandatory requirements for detergents in gasoline and diesel. Hopefully Trav will chime in with more information.
 
Originally Posted By: Falcon_LS

Although the U.S. EPA was the first to set detergent requirements for fuel (in '95 IIRC), the Europeans are definitely up there.


Great post!

Now, you just need to find out how much (and what type) of additives are in US "top tier" gasoline,

and then find out how much (and what type) of additives are in ACEA specification gasoline.

Is this published anywhere, or is it proprietary information ?
 
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Originally Posted By: Falcon_LS
Although the U.S. EPA was the first to set detergent requirements for fuel (in '95 IIRC), the Europeans are definitely up there.

Great post!

Now, you just need to find out how much (and what type) of additives are in US "top tier" gasoline, and then find out how much (and what type) of additives are in ACEA specification gasoline.

Is this published anywhere, or is it proprietary information ?

I think our own academico/mixologist, MR. Molakule, may have those or point us in the right direction.....
 
Originally Posted By: Linctex
Originally Posted By: Falcon_LS

Although the U.S. EPA was the first to set detergent requirements for fuel (in '95 IIRC), the Europeans are definitely up there.


Great post!

Now, you just need to find out how much (and what type) of additives are in US "top tier" gasoline,

and then find out how much (and what type) of additives are in ACEA specification gasoline.

Is this published anywhere, or is it proprietary information ?

It depends on a bunch of factors. One is that often the brand rights may not even have that much to do with distribution. The Arco brand name is now divided. BP sold it to Tesoro but kept the ampm convenience store brand. They licensed ampm back to Tesoro. Tesoro then licensed Arco back to BP in certain markets (from Washington to Northern California). So there's even the possibility that the Arco stations operated through BP use a different additive than the ones operated through Tesoro.

For the most part, the sellers don't actually develop the additives themselves. Most are made by big chemical companies like Afton, BASF, Chevron Oronite, or Lubrizol. A few probably do develop in-house, like Chevron and Sunoco.

They can buy it off the shelf or even have a chemical company develop a custom formula (like Lubrizol does for Costco). There are oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell that make it seem as if they've got all these chemists developing their additives in house. However, they have nothing on the EPA list of certified detergent additives. I remember when there was a certified detergent additive listed by the Infineum joint venture between ExxonMobil and Shell, but they don't even mention anything about detergent additives any more in their product information.

https://www3.epa.gov/otaq/fuels1/ffars/web-detrg.htm

And the "type" may not really matter. We talk a lot about polyether amines (of which gasoline additives aren't even the most common use) as the standard because that's what Chevron developed as detergents and where they publicized that well. There are other types (or combinations) of detergent additives. The most important thing is the type of additive, but that it's effective. There are Top Tier certified additives that are PEA and some that aren't. Top Tier isn't about chemistry, but performance.
 
Originally Posted By: Claud
How does the "Opal Fuel" available at Aborigine Reservations compare?.

Claud

Isn't that Opal gas designed to keep people from huffing its vapors, kind of like how CARB sets a maximum for aromatics and vapor pressure for air quality reasons?
 
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