Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) News
Printer Friendly VersionNew use for butane fuels
SwRI® has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of using butane and a variety of butane/propane fuel blends as alternative, low-emission automotive fuels.
San Antonio, Texas — January 22, 1996 — Engineers at Southwest Research Institute’s™ (SwRI) Emissions Research Department recently completed a project that successfully demonstrates the feasibility of using butane and a variety of butane/propane fuel blends as alternative, low-emission automotive fuels.
Results of the study, which was sponsored by ARCO Products Company, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and SwRI, are published in Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Technical Paper 952496, “Use of Butane as an Alternative Fuel: Emissions from a Conversion Vehicle Using Various Blends.”
Butane has been used as an important gasoline blending component for many years to upgrade the octane of gasoline and to aid in cold starting during winter. Reformulated gasoline requirements for lower fuel vapor pressure, however, have resulted in the removal of increasing amounts of butane from the gasoline pool, thus creating surplus supplies of a potentially useful automotive fuel.
According to SwRI project manager, former Senior Research Engineer Matthew Newkirk, “the study shows that for a ‘current technology vehicle’ converted to operate on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), not only was the use of butane blends feasible, but in all cases resulted in significantly lower emission rates of non-methane organic gases (NMOG), carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and EPA ‘toxics’ in comparison to operation with conventional gasoline.”
“In addition,” he says, “the specific reactivity (ozone-forming potential) of exhaust emissions when operating on the butane/propane blends was also substantially lower than for conventional gasoline. As a consequence, the converted vehicle was able to easily meet California’s Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle (ULEV) standards at the mileage tested.”
Because the vehicle was configured for LPG, and its pressure-tight fuel system permitted no evaporative emissions, it can also be classified as an Inherently Low Emission Vehicle (ILEV). “And because butane/propane blends result in a fuel economy approximately 80 percent that of gasoline, they provide significant on-board energy storage advantages in comparison to other alternative fuels,” Newkirk notes.
Based on requests by industry and government, engineers at
Southwest Research Institute plan to continue work on butane/propane fuel blends through a
proposed multi-client cooperative research program. This
program, titled “Demonstration of Butane/Propane Blends as Viable Alternative
Fuels,” is scheduled to begin in March and is open to industry for participation.
For more information about butane fuels, contact Deborah Deffenbaugh, Communications Department, Southwest Research Institute, P.O. Drawer 28510, San Antonio, Texas 78228-0510, Phone (210) 522-2046, Fax (210) 522-3547.
