we were discussing this yesterday during soccer. Thought this would be useful to some of the bros here. 

I realised that S'pore uses higher octane petrol than places like NZ and Australia.  I remember in NZ the highest I can find is 96... why S'pore so kiasu?

quote:

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Originally posted by orangeboy:
I realised that S'pore uses higher octane petrol than places like NZ and Australia.  I remember in NZ the highest I can find is 96... why S'pore so kiasu?

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Not kiasu lar.. coz Singapore more environmental friendly.

When crude oil is refined an intermediate light end (almost gaseous) product is collected - this is called naptha. Naptha has a low octane number (index) because
most of the molecules in it are straight chained. Naptha is then reformed - straight chained molecules are converted to cyclic molecules - to increase its octane number. This is costly, so TML or TEL is added to boost up the octane number. So leaded petrol is a mixture of reformed naptha, unreformed naptha and TML in small doses. The proportion of reformed/unreformed naptha determines the octane number 87 or 92 or 97 or 103 or ...... 

In unleaded petrol (without TML) more reformed naptha will be added to achieve the required octane number, therefore it is more expensive to make than leaded
petrol. In

Singapore it is cheaper because of lower tax to encourage people to use pollution free fuel.) There is possibily one of the reasons why Sin octane is higher than NZ. Of course, there might be other reasons unknown to us... maybe someone else have an answer 

 Hmm.. look at US, scrambling to meet the Kyoto PRotocol deadline of 2012...
But then again, they are the Big Brother.. what to do.