Assessing, quantifying, and characterizing fuels and emissions is an important way to ensure safe and reliable utilization of fuels, reduce emissions, and enhance energy efficiency. Fuels and emissions assessment also provides important data for the development of advanced clean energy technologies. In addition, when researchers discover the environmental and health effects of a particular fuel or emission, this can provide justification for environmental - and health-related judicial and regulatory matters, and support the development and harmonization of national and international standards for fuel specifications and emission measurement.

The combustion units available to our research scientists at our world-class facilities assess a variety of fuels, including petroleum distillate and residual fuel oils, biofuels, bio-oils, natural gas, oil sand bitumen and bitumen emulsions, heavy oil emulsions, and pulverized coal. Our research fosters important technology transfer applications of fuels and emissions assessment. These include:

• Combustion technology development for renewable and unconventional fuels
• Evaluation of combustion and emission performance of commercial fuels
• Optimization of commercial fuel oils based on property/performance evaluations
• Third-party scientific evaluation for dispute resolution of litigation cases and expert witness documents
• Cold temperature performance evaluation
• Assessment of fuel handling properties
• Performance evaluation of burner and appliances
• Fine particulate sampling
• Fuel sulphur effects studies
• Evaluation of flame characteristics and heat transfer characteristics
• Slagging and fouling studies for coal blends

For further information about our work in fuels and emissions assessment technologies, visit our publications section.