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The influence of fuel aromatics type on the particulate matter (PM) and NOx exhaust emissions of a heavy-duty, single-cylinder, DI diesel engine was investigated. Eight fuels were blended from conventional and oil sands crude oil sources to form five fuel pairs with similar densities but with different poly-aromatic (1.6 to 14.6%) or total aromatic (14.3 to 39.0%) levels. The engine was tuned to meet the U.S. EPA 1994 emission standards. An eight-mode, steady-state simulation of the U.S. EPA heavy-duty transient test procedure was followed. The experimental results show that there were no statistically significant differences in the PM and NOx emissions of the five fuel pairs after removing the fuel sulphur content effect on PM emissions. However, there was a definite trend towards higher NOx emissions as the fuel density, poly-aromatic and total aromatic levels of the test fuels increased.

Three joint Government/Industry program have been reviewed to evaluate the effect of fuel properties and source on exhaust emissions from three post 1994 model year heavy-duty diesel engines, a single cylinder research engine and a prototype multicylinder engine designed to meet the 2004 model year oxides of nitrogen limit. The three post 1994 engines tested (at Environment Canada's facility) were a Detroit Diesel Series 50, a Caterpillar 3406E and a Cummins N14. Exhaust emissions of NOx, PM, CO, HC, and CO2 were measured using the “hot” US EPA Heavy-duty Transient Test Procedure. The single cylinder Ricardo Proteus research engine (run at the National Research Council of Canada) and the multicylinder Caterpillar 3176 prototype engine (run at the Southwest Research Institute) were tested using the AVL 8 mode test cycle. Fifteen fuels were tested in total: three “reference” Commercial Low Sulphur diesel fuels and twelve experimental fuels.