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Octane Rating or Octane Number

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Octane is a hydrocarbon liquid that is used as a reference standard to describe the tendency of gasoline, petrol, or benzin fuels to self ignite during compression prior to the desired position of the piston in the cylinder as appropriate for valve and ignition timing. The problem of premature ignition is referred to as pre-ignition and also as engine knock, which is a sound that is made when the fuel ignites too early in the compression stroke.

Severe knock causes severe engine damage, such as broken connecting rods, melted pistons, melted or broken valves and other components. The octane rating is a measure of how likely a gasoline or liquid petroleum fuel is to self ignite. The higher the number, the less likely an engine is to pre-ignite and suffer damage.

The most typically used engine management systems found in automobiles today monitor the level of knock that is being produced by the fuel being used. In modern computer controlled engines, the timing of the ignition will be automatically altered by the fuel management system to reduce the pre-ignition to an acceptable level.



It is possible for a fuel to have a Research Octane Number (RON) greater than 100, because iso-octane is not the most knock-resistant substance available. Racing fuels, avgas, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and alcohol fuels such as methanol may have octane ratings of 110 or significantly higher. Typical "octane booster" gasoline additives include MTBE, ETBE, isooctane and toluene. Lead in the form of tetra-ethyl lead was once a common additive, but since the 1970s, its use in most of the industrialised world has been restricted, and its use is currently limited mostly to aviation gasoline.

Research Octane Number (RON)


Effects of Octane Rating


It might seem odd that fuels with higher octane ratings are used in more powerful engines, since such fuels ignite less easily. However, detonation is undesirable in a spark ignition engine, and is signified by audible "pinging" or in more extreme cases "knock".

A fuel with a higher octane rating can be burnt in an engine with a high compression ratio without causing detonation, as such fuels are less prone to detonation. Compression is directly related to power and to thermodynamic efficiency (see engine tuning), so engines that require a higher octane fuel usually develop more motive power and therefore do more work in relation to the calorific value of the fuel (BTU) being used. Power output is a function of the properties of the fuel used, as well as the design of the engine itself, and is related to octane rating of the fuel. Power is limited by the maximum amount of fuel-air mixture that can be brought into the combustion chamber. When the throttle is partly open, only a small fraction of the total available power is produced because the manifold is operating at pressures far below that of the external atmosphere (depression). In this case, the octane requirement is far lower than when the throttle is opened fully and the manifold pressure increases to almost that of the external atmosphere, or higher in the case of forced induction engines (See supercharged or turbocharged engines).






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