I've seemed to notice that elsewhere in the world, the Centane ratings for diesel fuel are always higher than the 40 sold here in the United States of America. My question is, why is that so?

Also I was under the impression that our diesels would probally be more efficient to a small extent if the minimum required rating was higher. So whats the reasoning behind it?

Mike.

Higher Cetane ratings = Lower Profit Margins.

American business motto used to be "Give the Consumer the best product you can."
Now it's "Give the consumer the cheapest quality you can until they complain."

The EPA sets the minimum cetane rating, and it's 40. In some areas the rating is higher due to the local emissions requirements. Here we have been using TxLED which should be a mininum of 46.

MikeyB

Ahh, the money thing is what I expected to be the cuprit for the lower ratings. So is it just an additive package that affects the centane level or is it from the physical processing when producing the fuel?

Mike

I don't know who they come up with the Centane rating but I have heard from many over in the EU and they have a Centane of between 50 & 60. IIRC Bosch said 50 Centane is what we need for our fuel system but the EPA [yuk] caved and said 40 Centane was OK to make big oil happy.

Too bad the EPA won't cave on the onerous certification, recordkeeping, regional blending, oxygenation, etc. requirements that Big Oil is subjected to... because They don't foot the bill - we do! (on both ends, to boot [duhhh] )

I dread the day the goverment make all gas sold use 10% Alcohol as we lose 2-4 mpg in my wifes car every time we have tried it and it cost the same or more then regular gas. Also we wind up with dirty injectors [tapdshut]

.... not to mention tortillas are gonna cost an arm and a leg! [verymad]

Tortillas, how about beer? They use Hops for Ethanol too.

Usually the refinery has a minimum cetane number that they get out of the cat cracker (at least I think thats the unit that its in). And they basically push out as much fuel as they easily can, so lower cetane number means its easier to produce and they can produce larger volumes. I doubt that they'd use an additive due to the cost of just making an additive for the volumes that they need.