Cetane

Cetane is a measure of the compression ignition behavior of a diesel fuel; higher cetane levels enable quicker ignition. Cetane influences cold startability, exhaust emissions and combustion noise, with the magnitude of the impact depending on the overall combustion and emission control strategies and their application. In general, higher cetane enables improved control of ignition delay and combustion stability, especially with modern diesels which use high amounts of exhaust gas recirculation (EGR).

The EU Fuel Quality Directive, followed by the United Kkingdom (UK), requires a minimum cetane number (CN) of 51.0. The SGS WWFS shows that the cetane numbers in all diesel samples taken between 2015 and 2020 were, on average, above the minimum of 51.0.

The lowest cetane numbers, with re