Aviation gasolines performance number

Aviation gasoline contains a high concentration of alkylate and high-octane-number aromatics. Careful fractionation of virgin naphtha can also be performed to isolate isohexane and isoheptane fractions. Aromatic components are limited by their calorific value and are typically C and Cg. 

This value is primarily used to rate the antiknock values of aviation gasolines with octane numbers over 100. It is defined as the maximum knock-free power output obtained from fuel expressed as a percentage of the power obtainable from isooctane. The relationship between octane number and performance number is listed as follows ... 

Other tests have been used in the past, particularly for aviation gasoline, where it was more important to discriminate accurately between fuels with ON > 100. These had the advantage of being more related to real physical phenomena. For example, the performance number [11] was based on a single standard fuel, iso-octane, and the relative indicated mean effective power (imep) (defined in terms of the cylinder pressure [3]), and so is directly related to combustion. The performance number was 100 times the ratio of the knock limited imeps of the fuel and iso-octane. Much of the API 45 project on octane number of mixtures of pure hydrocarbons (see Section 7.2.5) was reported in terms of performance number. This project of the American Petroleum Institute ran from 1938 to 1957, and has provided an invaluable source of basic data. The articles by Lovell [10] and Scott [12] review and interpret these data. Whilst this criterion and these values of CCRs [10,13] are no longer in widespread use for automotive fuels, the data available in the older literature could still be useful in testing chemical models. Because the octane number scale is based on two reference fuels, modelling the octane number of any hydro-... 

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