Development of detergent additives for automotive fuels in other countries

With increasing demands on environmental protection and with the production of reformulated unleaded motor fuels, new and effective detergent additives are urgently needed. A number of monographs and scientific works have been devoted to problems involved in the development and application of such additives. Since the mid-1980s in the United States and certain other countries, a crisis has been noted in the application of detergent additives. It has been found that certain types of detergents not only fail to give the required cleaning effect, but even promote the formation of deposits. This situation can be attributed primarily to the development of automotive gasoline engines with direct fuel injection. In the United States in 1989, about 90% of all automotive vehicles were equipped with such engines, which have very definite advantages in fuel economy, less smoking, and a number of other areas. However, after a few thousand kilometers of travel, the characteristics of these engines deteriorate, and undesirable changes are observed, including excessive fuel consumption, a reduction of the vehicle speed, and increased contents of carbon monoxide in the exhaust. These changes occur because of deposit formation in the fuel intake system, particularly on the intake valves. As the deposits continuemore » to accumulate, the engines gradually experience an increase in octane number demand for engine operation without knocking. This phenomenon, which is known in American publications as {open_quotes}octane requirement increase{close_quotes} or ORI (Russian initialism RTOCh, literal translation, {open_quotes}increase of requirements for octane number{close_quotes}), continues until a certain equilibrium octane number is reached. This equilibrium value may change, depending on the engine design and other factors. In all cases, however, the ORI of modern engines is significant, amount to 2-14 octane numbers.« less