Chemical reaction is the most important source of combustion irreversibility in premixed conditions, but details of the exergy loss mechanisms have not been explored yet. In this study numerical analysis based on non-equilibrium thermodynamics combined with detailed chemical kinetics is conducted to explore the exergy loss mechanism of gasoline engine like combustion process which is simplified as constant volume combustion. The fuel is represented by the common accepted gasoline surrogates which consist of four components: iso-octane (57%), n-heptane (16%), toluene (23%), and 2-pentene (4%). We find that overall exergy loss is mainly composed of three peaks along combustion generated from chemical reactions in three stages, the conversion from large fuel molecules into small molecules (as Stage 1), the H2O2 loop-related reactions (as Stage 2), and the violent oxidation reactions of CO, H, and O (as Stage 3). The effects of individual combustion boundaries, including temperature, pressure, equivalence ratio, oxygen concentration, on combustion exergy loss have been widely investigated. The combined effects of combustion boundaries on the total loss of gasoline surrogates are also investigated. We find that in a gasoline engine with a compression ratio of 10, the total loss can be reduced from 31.3% to 24.3% using lean combustion. The total loss can be further reduced to 22.4% by introducing exhaust gas recirculation and boosting the inlet charge. If the compression ratio is increased to 17, the total loss can be decreased to 20.4%, and finally to 16.8%, if the compression ratio is further increased to 100. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.