Development of a Benchtop Fuel Lubricity Assessment Method

Rapid development of automotive fuels has occurred in the past ten to fifteen years resulting in reformulated and alternative liquid fuels together with a myriad of fuel additives aimed primarily at improving combustion and tail pipe emissions. Many of these changes have had significant but unreported or unmeasured effects on the physical properties of the fuels.

This paper presents the details of a program which sought to characterize the lubricity (or antiwear) characteristics of known gasoline formulations with a bench top assessment test machine and to correlate these results to actual fuel pump wear debris generation tests.