Gasoline Blending Plus

Maximizing Your Octane

Two ways to Blend Gasoline Components

1 & 2 Have a positive interaction

3 & 4 Have a negative interaction

All other interactions insignificant

     In the above example, gasoline components 1 & 2 have a positive octane interaction. (The octane number of a 50:50 blend is above the average.)  Components 3 & 4 have a negative interaction.  The most profitable way to blend is to put pairs of components with  positive interaction into the same grade and to separate pairs of components with a negative interaction by putting them into different grades.

     By taking advantage of the octane interactions, the octane number of the gasoline pool is slightly higher with the exact same components.  This can be taken advantage of by increasing the percent of premium or decreasing reformate severity.  Without accurate octane interaction information, optimization will give non-optimum compositions which can result in a pool octane 0.1 octane or more below that of the optimum blending scheme.    A loss of 0.1 octane can cost a large refinery in the order of $1 million per year.

Close Window