Sulphur in petrol: Australia's dirty secret (plus your Q&A)

QUESTION

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Answering a question from you, about Australia's sky-high sulphur level in petrol. Will it wear your engine out early? Why is it so bad? What about pollution (which kills more people than the road toll)?

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Here’s the primary question, from Ravi:

Hi John,

Enjoying your show and live stream. I tend to listen to the podcasts on the drive to and from work.

Just a question I understand that using higher octane fuel in a car that is tuned for 91 is a waste of money for minimal performance. Also understand the secret herbs and spices in higher octane fuel is not that beneficial.

I just wanted to know if there is any benefit in running higher octane fuel purely because it is low in sulphur. Does the low sulphur fuel 50ppm save $$$ long-term in terms of wear and tear on parts.

Keen to know your thoughts

Kind Regards,

Ravi

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Answers

In April 2019, ScoMo and his federal government gave the local fuel industry a free pass on sulphur content by maintaining the status quo for another eight years.

The fuel industry claims it would cost about $1bn to upgrade local refineries, and they don’t want to do that, obviously. Australia doesn’t really have much of a local fuel industry anymore (its member refineries are old and they struggle to compete with Singapore). Unfortunately, our fuel quality is shit, comparatively.

We are 70th in the world on fuel quality and last among the 35 OECD countries. More here >>

Australia’s 91RON fuel blend has 150ppm, and our Premium (98RON) has 50ppm. Which seems great - but it’s not. It’s totally, appallingly sub-standard.

Our automotive diesel is the cleanest fuel in terms of sulphur - 10ppm (but still high in polycyclic aromatics, and out of step on cetane rating and density).

All our fuel is way filthier than USA, EU, Japan, South Korea - all on 10ppm

We are also worse than India and China...

But our premium petrol uses a lot of aromatics to boost the octane rating - so even that is filthy by world standards.

Sulphur is not about wear and tear - it’s about pollution, and that means air quality.

Pollution causes 2500 premature deaths here in Australia, which is more than double the annual road toll. And yet all the government messaging and mainstream news reporting goes into spectacular road crashes and deaths.

Sulphur is a chemical composition of crude oil; there’s no escaping it. During the refining process, sulphur needs to be removed. Out refineries don’t want to upgrade their facilities to remove the sulphur.

The nasty little bi-product of the combustion process in question here is SOx (oxides of sulphur), which are not unlike oxides of nitrogen (made infamous thanks to Volkswagen) found in diesel. Oxides of sulphur need removing by the catalytic converter, with the help of platinum (expensive, rare).

This is a concept I highly doubt any politician could possibly have the intelligence to understand (personal opinion).

Euro 5 is the current emissions standard, but our fuel is below the benchmark that would allow vehicles to achieve that. So Euro 6 standards have zero chance of being adopted for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile old trucks are the filthiest most polluting vehicles on our roads because they have no emissions regulations and they’re the cheapest form of transport for cargo in our cities.

You can blame two groups for helping take these emission standards so disgracefully long to adopt: the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries - which is a grubby little lobby group that spent years pleading the case to the federal government not to adopt new emissions regulations because it would impact the local car manufacturing of Ford, Holden and Toyota. And it took years (and years) for Australia to catch up.

And the fuel refining industry lobby group/s can share blame for whatever presumed under-the-table handshakes they’ve done with the government to delay changing the regulations.

This was probably done over a series of long boozy lunches, and has nothing to with being a benefit to Australian society and everything to do with direct benefits to individual industries.

So, thanks very much for that, lobby groups and politicians for helping prematurely kill people every year. If only we had a lobby group for the people to advocate what’s right.

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