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Gas to Liquids (GTL) diesel has been produced commercially for several years. GTL diesel is known for its excellent properties, including zero aromatics, near zero sulphur and a high cetane number. Most of the GTL diesel produced by commercial plants is utilised as a blend component, especially in blends up to 20%. In these applications, the cold flow properties are potentially less critical, as the cold flow properties of the blend will mostly be determined by the petroleum-derived component. In certain markets, however, it is possible that GTL diesel can be used as a neat diesel, therefore requiring good cold flow properties. An advantage of GTL technology is that the cold flow properties of GTL diesel can be tailored to meet the climatic requirements of a specific geographical area. In the current study, GTL diesel samples with cold flow properties ranging from ‘summer type’ to ‘winter type’ and varying intermediate cold flow qualities were evaluated.

Iso-stoichiometric ternary blends - in which three-component blends of gasoline, ethanol and methanol are configured to the same stoichiometric air-fuel ratio as an equivalent binary ethanol-gasoline blend - can function as invisible "drop-in" fuels suitable for the existing E85/gasoline flex-fuel vehicle fleet. This has been demonstrated for the two principal means of detecting alcohol content in such vehicles, which are considered to be a virtual, or software-based, sensor, and a physical sensor in the fuel line. Furthermore when using such fuels the tailpipe CO₂ emissions are essentially identical to those found when the vehicle is operated on E85. Because of the fact that methanol can be made from a wider range of feed stocks than ethanol and at a cheaper price, these blends then provide opportunities to improve energy security, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to produce a fuel blend which could potentially be cheaper on a cost-per-unit-energy basis than gasoline or diesel.