Atomic spectrometric methods for the determination of metals and metalloids in automotive fuels - A review

Gasoline, diesel, ethanol and more recently also biodiesel are the four types of fuel used for automobile, truck and other transportation vehicle. The presence of metallic and metalloid species in automotive fuels is undesirable, except in the form of additives in order to improve specific characteristics of the fuel. Metallic or metalloid elements may derive from the raw product, such as nickel and vanadium in petroleum-based fuel or phosphorus in biodiesel, or they may be introduced during production and storage, such as copper, iron, nickel and zinc in case of petroleum-based fuel and alcohol or sodium and potassium in the case of biodiesel. The most famous additive to fuel is undoubtedly lead, the use of which has been banned or drastically reduced now in many countries of the world. The problems related to the trace element content may be economic, such as fuel degradation and poisoning of automotive catalysts, and/or environmental, such as the emission of metal compounds to the atmosphere. The analytical methods that have been developed for metal and metalloid quantification in automotive fuel are reviewed in this article. The main atomic spectrometric techniques used for trace metal and metalloid determination in fuels, particularly atomic absorption spectrometry with flames, graphite furnaces and with chemical vapor generation, and inductively coupled plasma coupled with optical emission and mass spectrometry are presented, including the different sample preparation procedures proposed for these techniques.     

Application of a non-asymptotic approach to prediction of the propagation of a flame through a fuel and/or oxidant droplet cloud

The mathematical analysis of laminar premixed spray propagation has generally been based on exploiting the inverse of the large chemical activation energy as an appropriate parameter for asymptotic analysis. In the current work we apply a modification of a recently suggested non-asymptotic approach for gaseous flames which makes use of a different approximation. In it, only the Arrhenius exponential term in the reaction rate expression is approximated using a step function chosen so that the two functions are in proximity in an integral sense. Application of this approach is more amenable and is shown to yield a simple formula for the burning velocity of a flame propagating through a cloud of fuel and/or oxidant droplets, for the fuel rich off-stoichiometric case in which the only reactant present in the chemical reaction term is the deficient oxidant which appears linearly. Results computed with the new analytical solutions are presented and a comparison is made with the predictions using the usual large activation energy approach. In addition, a double spray is considered for the first time in which both liquid oxidant and liquid fuel feature as sprays of droplets in the unburned pre-mixture. Such a situation arises in rocket engines in which two initially separate spray streams mix in a turbulent shear flow so that locally one dimensionally propagating double spray premixed flames are created. The analysis leads to an analytical expression for the laminar burning velocity dependent on the spray- and gas-related parameters. Typical thermal and velocity maps in parametric space are presented.     

Assessment of environmental contamination risk by Pt, Rh and Pd from automobile catalyst

The main active components of present-day car catalysts are the noble metals Pt, Pd and Rh, belonging to the platinum group elements (PGEs). It is recognized that these elements are being spread into the environment to an as-yet incompletely known extent, mainly due to surface abrasion of the catalyst during car operation. These new pollutants have motivated extensive research on PGE determination. Our work is planned to ascertain the health and ecosystem risks of these PGEs emitted through a series of interrelated objectives that address the pathway of these elements from the catalyst to the different environmental compartments. Combined studies of catalyst surface abrasion and exhaust fumes analysis, the monitoring of Pt, Pd and Rh in airborne particles and road dust sediments and bioaccumulation studies in aquatic organisms, plants and urine enable a realistic assessment of the risk that this release represents for man and environment. In this work some previous results are presented.     

Characterization of freeform optics in automotive lighting systems using an Optical-Geometrical Feature Based Method

The use of freeform optics has been more widespread. It is difficult to evaluate the optical performance of the freeform optics due to its geometrical complexity. This paper presents a novel method named Optical-Geometrical Feature Based Method (OGFM) for the characterization of freeform optics. The method attempts to establish the relationship between the geometrical features of freeform surfaces (e.g. the surface roughness and form error) and their corresponding optical performance. Hence, the optical performance of the freeform optics can be evaluated by the measurement of the geometrical features which is relative easy to be carried out as compared to the optical performance tests conducted in automotive lighting systems. A series of simulation experiments have been conducted on the freeform optics in an automotive lighting system. The results show that the geometrical errors in micrometer scale appear not to have significant effect on the optical performance of the freeform optics. However, the optical performance is adversely affected when the geometrical form error increases from more than tens of micrometers scale to sub-millimeters scale. The successful development of the proposed OGFM provides an important means for the optimization of manufacturing tolerance, the selection of appropriate optics manufacturing process, and the evaluation of the optical performance evaluation of the freeform optics.     

A generalized scheme for analysis of multifarious commercially used mufflers

Commercial automotive mufflers are often too complex to be broken into a cascade of one-dimensional elements with predetermined transfer matrices. The one-dimensional (1-D) scheme presented in this paper is based on an algorithm that uses user-friendly visual volume elements along with the theory of transfer matrix based muffler analysis. This work attempts to exploit the speed of the one-dimensional analysis with the flexibility, generality and user-friendliness of three-dimensional analysis using geometric modeling. A code based on the developed algorithm has been employed to demonstrate the generality of the proposed method in analyzing commercial mufflers by considering three very diverse classes of mufflers with different kinds of combinations of reactive, perforated and absorptive elements. Though the examples used in the paper are not very complex for they are meant to be just representative cases of certain classes of mufflers, yet the algorithm can handle a large domain of commercial mufflers of high degree of complexity. Results from the present algorithm have been validated through comparisons with both the analytical (plane wave based) and the more general, three-dimensional FEM based results. The forte of the proposed method is its power to construct the system matrix consistent with the boundary conditions from the geometrical model to evaluate the four-pole parameters of the entire muffler and thence its transmission loss, etc. Thus, the algorithm can be used in conjunction with the transfer matrix based muffler programs to analyze the entire exhaust system of an automobile.