Is High Octane Fuel Good For Your Car? | 91 Octane Fuel vs 95 Octane Fuel

We should know the needs of our car which we own. One of the need is the Fuel. What is needed is to lower the maintenance and better the performance. So is high octane fuel needed for your normal car or is it for performance oriented cars only? Is high octane fuel good for your car or not that we will check here. Read to know which fuel is good for your car and what are the real requirements.

High octane Vs normal petrol

What is a high octane Fuel and what is the difference between the high octane fuel and normal petrol? First of all the octane number is defined for the Petrol fuel only. For diesel there is another term used that is called as Cetane number. That we will cover in some other day but here we will discuss about the Octane number only.

The octane number defines the quality of the fuel. High octane fuel have octane value ranging from 91 to 95 and even till 99. Whereas the normal petrol having octane value at 88 or 87 only.
Actually the number denotes that the fuel having higher octane value will burn more quickly. It is achieved or increased basically to fetch more power and increase the efficiency of the engine.
Octane number defines the efficiency of the fuel. For example 91 denotes that if the fuel is burnt 100 Times for 100 Cycles then it will produce power for 91 cycles only. The remaining 9 cycles will be lost or no power will be produced for those 9 cycles. Which simply means for 87 octane fuel, 13 cycles will produce no power or it gets wasted.
The High Octane value is achieved by the use of additives mixing in the fuel.
The need of the High Octane Fuel became crucial when there was a High demand for bigger Engines or more power generating engines came in 20th century.
Number of cylinders were increased to produce more power even the 16 cylinder engine was developed.
But it was not practical for increasing size of the engine, due to size issue, pollution and other factors taking into consideration.
Then came the concept of increasing the Compression Ratio. But there are still problems with increased compression ratio. It leads to Knocking and Detonation ultimately damaging the engine.

So fuel improvement became a better choice. A mixture of Iso Octane+ Normal Heptane was prepared and used to add it with the fuel.
The mixture value was denoted in the form of a Number. later it was termed as Octane number.
Octane Number simply defines the value of the Iso Octane mixed in a fuel. For example Iso Octane is 100% and Normal Heptane is 0% that means the fuel is having 100 octane number. Produce no Knocking, improve the performance and mileage.
Iso Octane was proved to reduce the knocking in the engine. But it was not feasible to mix Iso Octane in the fuel due to increased cost of it.
So there is a Normal petrol that contains around 87 Octane value to become feasible for the buyer and produce optimum efficiency.
The High Octane fuel can contain even 100 Octane value but Till date in India the highest octane fuel has been achieved is 99 octane and it is developed by HPCL named it as Power 99 petrol.

High Octane Vs Normal Petrol Mileage

Basically the fuel burning efficiency is denoted by the Octane number. If it is higher that means the fuel burning capacity is higher or it will burn earlier than the fuel having lower octane number.
Higher octane number means more efficient the fuel is. So it is considered that using it will increase the mileage of the car because it will burn more easily and more efficiently.

But it is not true also for all scenarios. With respect to the mileage there is a condition for using the high octane fuel. The truth is that it will increase mileage for a Normal Engine. Normal engine means the engine smaller in size and Naturally aspirated engines which are made for general purpose use and not for high performance. For those engines there will be no improvement of using a High Octane fuel. But for having a longer life and cleaner engine and its parts it can be considered to use High Octane fuel for every car or bike.

The High Octane fuel must be used in cars having Turbocharger or High End Performance Engines. Because high power generation is the aim these engines are developed in such a way that faster burning occur in the cylinder. For that to happen high octane fuel is needed because High Octane fuel has a property of burning quickly and eventually helping in generating more power. Here fuel economy also becomes important. The High Octane fuel helps in keeping the engine clean by leaving less residue from the exhaust. Because there is less fuel loss in internal combustion (High Octane fuel and burning happens for more cycles). So high Octane fuel can help in high fuel economy but only for high performance engines where mileage increased due to less fuel consumption. But not for smaller engines.

Also Read: Turbo Car Maintenance and repair

What Are The Disadvantages Of High Octane Fuel?

The use of High Octane fuel is good for the engine and performance but at the same time it has some of the disadvantages also.

Higher Cost
Not increase in the performance as such.
No increase in fuel economy. It is used to prevent engine Detonation and knocking.
No use for the normal engines.
It require extra efforts to design engine dedicated for it. So more time and investment is needed.
Proved waste of money for general purpose in long term. Its output is same as the normal fuel.

Should I put higher octane fuel in my car?

The use of the fuel depends on what engine you are using and what is your purpose of using that engine. A different dedicated engine is designed which needed particularly high octane fuel to run. Those engines are high performance engines designed for producing more power. So for such engines only high octane fuel should be filled. They are build for use of high octane fuel only. But for smaller engines for general purpose use and having less complex structures the higher octane fuel proved expensive and added extra cost of fuel.