The Lubricity of Gasoline

A study has been made of the lubricating properties of gasoline fuel. A conventional HFRR diesel fuel lubricity tester has been modified to measure gasoline wear. Using this test equipment, a number of features of gasoline lubricity have been investigated, including the comparative lubricating behavior of gasoline, the influence of detergent additives and oxygenates on wear and the wear behavior of a series of refinery streams employed in gasoline blending. The lubricity of a range of pure organic chemicals known to be present in gasoline has also been studied. From these measurements it has been shown that, except for components such as dienes and diaromatics, the HFRR lubricating properties of most gasoline hydrocarbon constituents are broadly independent of chemical structure bur depend significantly on viscosity. Using these measurements, predictive wear equations based on gasoline group analysis have been developed. Because it has been found that viscosity plays a role in determining the wear properties of gasoline, the elastohydrodynamic (EHD) film-forming and friction properties of gasoline have been measured and compared to those of diesel fuels. This shows that the combination of gasoline's very low viscosity and low pressure-viscosity coefficient results in very thin EHD film thickness generation and also very low friction in full-film EHD conditions.