Xin Hui

Reduced Chemistry for Butanol Isomers at Engine-Relevant Conditions

Butanol has received significant research attention as a second-generation biofuel in the past few years. In the present study, skeletal mechanisms for four butanol isomers were generated from two widely accepted, well-validated detailed chemical kinetic models for the butanol isomers. The detailed models were reduced using a two-stage approach consisting of the directed relation graph with error propagation and sensitivity analysis. During the reduction process, issues were encountered with pressure-dependent reactions formulated using the logarithmic pressure interpolation approach; these issues are discussed and recommendations are made to avoid ambiguity in its future implementation in mechanism development. The performance of the skeletal mechanisms generated here was compared with that of detailed mechanisms in simulations of autoignition delay times, laminar flame speeds, and perfectly stirred reactor temperature response curves and extinction residence times, over a wide range of pressures, temper...

Autoignition, Flame Propagation, and Extinction of Binary Fuel Blends of n-Decane/Ethylene and n-Decane/Methane

An experimental and computational investigation is carried out to understand the combustion response of binary blends of n-decane/ethylene and n-decane/methane. The experiments cover the phenomena of autoignition, flame propagation, and flame extinction. The reported results, for the various combustion responses, cover a pressure range of 1-7 bar and a temperature span of 750 K to 2200 K. Ignition delay measurements for ndecane/ethylene/air and n-decane/methane/air mixtures, corresponding to an overall equivalence ratio of 0.8, are conducted for a fixed compression ratio and for a post compression pressure of 7 bar, using a rapid compression machine. A parametric study is conducted by changing the relative amounts of n-decane:ethylene and n-decane:methane in the binary fuel blend to observe the influence of blending ratio on ignition delays. A similar parametric study for atmospheric flame propagation and extinction of preheated fuel blend/oxidizer mixtures is also conducted.