CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 71, 2018 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Xiantang Zhang, Songrong Qian, Jianmin Xu Copyright © 2018, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-68-6; I SSN 2283-9216 Design Optimization of an Automotive Fuel Tank for the Minimization of Evaporative Losses of Gasoline Due to Thermal Conduction: Experimental & Analytical Approach Prashant Shukla*, Ram Kunwer, Swapnil Sureshchandra Bhurat Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; School of Engineering Studies, University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun 248007, India prashantshukla1617@gmail.com Environment is being polluted due to several toxic gases like CO, CO 2 , NO x , and HC every day. The sectors responsible for disturbing the balance of atmosphere are mainly industrial and transportation. CO mainly evolved because of lack of oxygen during combustion, NO x evolve if combustion occurs at high temperature and HC released to the atmosphere from exhaust and evaporation of fuel from the fuel tank. Data collection and analysis revealed that the total evaporation loss is around 6 to 7 %. In this paper, an experiment was performed on a two-wheeler tank, which is made of carbon steel sheet metal. Carbon steel sheet metal is one of the major cause of gasoline evaporation due to its high thermal conductivity. In the experiment, evaporative losses of gasoline is quantified along with the heat transfer analysis on the fuel tank body. Experimental results revealed that evaporative loss in C-steel tank is 15.92% and in composite tank with insulated layer is 0.44%. Therefore, the obtained results must have a positive impact on environment i.e. low HC emission into the environment. 1. Introduction Pollution of environment is not only due to emission of hydrocarbon from the exhaust gases of vehicle, but hydrocarbons present in gasoline are also responsible factor. Transportation plays a major role in GHG (greenhouse gas) emission which is directly associated with climate change et al., 2018).It is released into the environment from the tank of automobile when it is refueled and additionally all through transportation and storage because of evaporation. Due to the evaporation of gasoline, organic vapor is released into the atmosphere, which causes huge energy waste and severe environmental pollution like ozone pollution. and Around 1.5 – 2% gasoline is evaporated in to the atmosphere, when it is shifted from producer to customer and around 40% of the hydrocarbons( emitted by road transport) comes from the evaporation from the fuel system of automobile with gasoline engines (Aulich et al., 1994; Hilpert et al., 2015; Jurušs and Seile, 2017). MAC curve is a tool to target emission reduction in industrial sector(Atkins, Neale, Wu, & Walmsley, 2018). Authors have also used CFD simulation air speed distribution and pollutants of exhaust (Zhan et al., 2018). It is also observed that due to solar radiation, temperature of gasoline in fuel tank increases and evaporation takes place, which is hazardous to human health. (Petrol, In, & Tanks, 2010) explained HC release during refueling storage of gas stations and transferring the fuel to fuel tank and its effects on human health and environment. It has been observed that the attendants on gas stations and the drivers of the vehicle are mainly surviving from the health risk because of inhaling HC (Javelaud et al., 1998; Karakitsios et al., 2007). Table 1 shows the statistics of USA and Canada gasoline consumption, with a presumption that if a small 0.1 % of HC is considered to be released in environment. When gasoline is evaporated, its composition and properties also varies because different components evaporate at different rate. It is a general phenomenon of the gasoline and occurs in all type of equipment fuel tanks. When gasoline is filled in tank, light component is evaporated first which is essential element for octane benefits during cold start. Because when cold start occurs these light component forms most of the air fuel mixture. In the absence of these light components DOI: 10.3303/CET1871233 Please cite this article as: Shukla P., Kunwer R., Bhurat S.S., 2018, Design optimization of an automotive fuel tank for the minimization of evaporative losses of gasoline due to thermal conduction: experimental & analytical approach, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 71, 1393-1398 DOI:10.3303/CET1871233 1393