Development of a diesel cold performance evaluation method by use of design of experiment

In recent years there has been an increase in the number of vehicle start ability and operability issues during winter condition. Among the diesel cold properties, CFPP was generally used to provide a reference temperature for cold weather operability with diesel fuels for prediction of diesel cold performance. However, CFPP has been unlikely to have acceptable low temperature operability because of too much wax particles accumulated on the surface of the fuel filter in CRDI system. Otherwisely, preventing wax plugging of fuel filter in cold weather condition, cold flow characteristics should be also determined by fuel delievery system. The intent of this study was to find significant design variables for diesel cold performance and propose the cold performance index to predict the diesel vehicle cold weather problem by use of design of experiment.