Monitoring of oil lubrication limits, fuel consumption, and excess CO2 production on civilian vehicles in Mexico

Abstract

The vehicle fleet in some regions of the world continues to age, so it is difficult to reduce the consumption of fuels, meet environmental objectives and mitigate the cost it represents. Studies exist regarding low mileage vehicles, yet it is important to know the effect generated by high mileage vehicles, which represents a higher percentage in the word. This work was based on the oil degradation. A maximum value of decrease in viscosity of 31% was found, from which the lubrication efficiency of the oil decreases. This also leads to a significant increase in gCO2/km and fuel consumption. In a deeper analysis of the Nissan Tsuru, we found an annual excess of 69.25 Lt of fuel consumption that produces 129.024 Kg additional of CO2 (12.18gCO2/km) with a cost of $1,414.08 Mexican pesos. Due to the average vehicle age in Mexico (15.3 years), these results can be taken as an average for the 45 million plus cars that are currently in circulation. Also, 5.806 million tons of CO2 are generated that represent 3.6% of all current emissions. This leads to a consumption of 3.11 billion liters of fuel at a cost of $63.63 billion Mexican pesos. This methodology can be generalized for different brands of cars and oils in countries with a vehicle fleet similar, in search of improving the monitoring and proper use of automotive oil. In addition, this provides information on the negative effects, so that the countries can establish procedures and strategies for compliance with low pollution policies.