ABSTRACT
At the present time, fuels derived from petroleum supply virtually all of the world’s transportation needs. The combustion of petroleum based fuels leads to the formation of particulates (soot), NOx, SOx, ozone, and ultimately to the formation of air pollution. The 1990 Clean Air Act mandated reformulated gasoline programs. The oxygenated fuels program requires the use of fuels containing 2.7% oxygen by weight in the wintertime to reduce CO emissions and 2.0% oxygen by weight in the summer to reduze ozone formation. In this talk, the environmental acceptability of alternative fuels will be presented. Experimental and computational chemistry results will be presented to highlight key mechanistic steps in the atmospheric oxidation of alternative fuels.
