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More stringent emissions regulations, fuel economy standards, and regulations are currently being discussed to help reduce both CO2 and exhaust emissions. Vehicle manufacturers have been developing new engine technologies, such as downsizing and down-speeding with reduced friction loss, improved engine combustion and efficiency, heat loss recycling, power-train friction loss recycling, and reduced power-train friction loss. The use of more efficient fuel economy 5W-30 engine oils for heavy duty commercial vehicles has started to expand since 2009 in Japan as one technological solution to help reduce CO2 emissions. However, fuel economy 5W-30 oils for use in heavy duty vehicles in Europe are mainly based on synthetic oils, which are much expensive than the mineral oils that are predominantly used in Japan.

Our research objective is to clarify the effect of the utilization of diesel fuels made from unconventional petroleum sources (GTL, Tar Sand, etc.) on the latest vehicle‛s emission and performance. The target properties studied are mainly cetane number and cyclic compounds. Two diesel vehicles and one engine were used in this study. Varieties of transient driving modes were selected for better understanding under real world driving in the emission test. Startability and operability are examined in the vehicle performance test. It was revealed that the tail-pipe emission from a J-2003 reg-compliant vehicle and the engine-out emission from a J-2005 reg-compliant engine used in this study were changed by cetane number and cyclic compound. For J-2003 reg-compliant vehicle, the decrease in cetane number led to the increase in emissions of THC, CO and NOx, while the increase in cyclic compounds led to increase in emissions of PM, THC, CO and NOx.