An experimental investigation on a group of unleaded gasolines of different chemical composition has been carried out, in order to analyze their knock behaviour in a mass-produced engine at high revolution speed, to highlight possible inconsistencies with their standard Research and Motor octane numbers and to try to discover explanations for the abovementioned inconsistencies.
The investigation has been focused on fuels containing oxygenated compounds, such as alcohols (methanol and ethanol) and ethers (MTBE), with the aim of pointing out the influence of the fuel composition on the octane rating, especially as far as the variation in the stoichiometric air/fuel ratio (due to oxygenated compounds blending) is concerned.
In particular, the rating of all the fuels under the same relative air/fuel ratio has shown to be a mandatory condition in order to obtain a proper estimate of antiknock performances. The evaluations obtained are consistent with the standard Motor octane numbers.