Jing-Bo Wang

ReaxFF molecular dynamics simulations of oxidation of toluene at high temperatures.

Aromatic hydrocarbon fuels, such as toluene, are important components in real jet fuels. In this work, reactive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations employing the ReaxFF reactive force field have been performed to study the high-temperature oxidation mechanisms of toluene at different temperatures and densities with equivalence ratios ranging from 0.5 to 2.0. From the ReaxFF MD simulations, we have found that the initiation consumption of toluene is mainly through three ways, (1) the hydrogen abstraction reactions by oxygen molecules or other small radicals to form the benzyl radical, (2) the cleavage of the C-H bond to form benzyl and hydrogen radicals, and (3) the cleavage of the C-C bond to form phenyl and methyl radicals. These basic reaction mechanisms are in good agreement with available chemical kinetic models. The temperatures and densities have composite effects on toluene oxidation; concerning the effect of the equivalence ratio, the oxidation reaction rate is found to decrease with the increasing of equivalence ratio. The analysis of the initiation reaction of toluene shows that the hydrogen abstraction reaction dominates the initial reaction stage at low equivalence ratio (0.5-1.0), while the contribution from the pyrolysis reaction increases significantly as the equivalence ratio increases to 2.0. The apparent activation energies, E(a), for combustion of toluene extracted from ReaxFF MD simulations are consistent with experimental results.

Mechanism construction and simulation for high-temperature combustion of n -propylcyclohexane

A detailed mechanism covering 545 species and 3105 reactions for high-temperature combustion of n-propylcyclohexane(n-PCH), generated via a mechanism generation program(ReaxGen) developed by our research group, was validated in this study. A semi-detailed mechanism involved with 195 species and 573 reactions and a skeletal mechanism concerned with 108 species and 393 reactions were obtained by means of rate-of-production analysis and path flux analysis(PFA), respectively. In order to validate the reliability of these mechanisms, ignition delay time, laminar flame speed and concentration profiles of important species were simulated with the help of CHEMKIN software. Numerically predicted results of our mechanisms are in very good agreement with available experimental data. Finally, major reaction pathways of n-PCH combustion and important reactions during the combustion process were investigated by reaction pathway analysis and sensitivity analysis, respectively. The results indicate that these mechanisms are reliable for describing the auto-ignition characteristics of n-PCH. These mechanisms would also be helpful to computational fluid dynamics(CFD) for engine design. Moreover, this systematic approach used in our study, which combines mechanism construction, simplification, validation and analysis for n-PCH, may also be employed to construct mechanisms for the high-temperature combustion of other cycloalkanes with one ring.

A study on orientation and absorption spectrum of interfacial molecules by using continuum model

In this work, a numerical procedure based on the continuum model is developed and applied to the solvation energy for ground state and the spectral shift against the position and the orientation of the interfacial molecule. The interface is described as a sharp boundary separating two bulk media. The polarizable continuum model (PCM) allows us to account for both electrostatic and nonelectrostatic solute–solvent interactions when we calculate the solvation energy. In this work we extend PCM to the interfacial system and the information about the position and orientation of the interfacial molecule can be obtained. Based on the developed expression of the electrostatic free energy of a nonequilibrium state, the numerical procedure has been implemented and used to deal with a series of test molecules. The time‐dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) associated with PCM is used for the electron structure and the spectroscopy calculations of the test molecules in homogeneous solvents. With the charge distribution of the ground and excited states, the position‐ and orientation‐dependencies of the solvation energy and the spectrum have been investigated for the interfacial systems, taking the electrostatic interaction, the cavitation energy, and the dispersion–repulsion interaction into account. The cavitation energy is paid particular attention, since the interface portion cut off by the occupation of the interfacial molecule contributes an extra part to the stabilization for the interfacial system. The embedding depth, the favorable orientational angle, and the spectral shift for the interfacial molecule have been investigated in detail. From the solvation energy calculations, an explanation has been given on why the interfacial molecule, even if symmetrical in structure, tends to take a tilting manner, rather than perpendicular to the interface.

Solvent Reorganization Energy and Electronic Coupling for Intramolecular Electron Transfer in Biphenyl-Acceptor Anion Radicals

A novel algorithm was designed and implemented to realize the numerical calculation of the solvent reorganization energy for electron transfer reactions, on the basis of nonequilibrium solvation theory and the dielectric polarizable continuum model. Applying the procedure to the well-investigated intramolecular electron transfer in biphenyl-androstane-naphthyl and biphenyl-androstane-phenanthryl systems, the numerical results of solvent reorganization energy were determined to be around 60 kJ/mol, in good agreement with experimental data. Koopmans theorem was adopted for the calculation of the electron transfer coupling element, associated with the linear reaction coordinate approximation. The values for this quantity obtained are acceptable when compared with experimental results.