Book Description

Detailed kinetic models of pyrolysis and combustion of hydrocarbon fuels are nowadays widely used in the design of internal combustion engines and these models are effectively applied to help meet the increasingly stringent environmental and energetic standards. In previous studies by the combustion community, such models not only contributed to the understanding of pure component combustion, but also provided a deeper insight into the combustion behavior of complex mixtures. One of the major challenges in this field is now the definition and the development of appropriate surrogate models able to mimic the actual features of real fuels. Real fuels are complex mixtures of thousands of hydrocarbon compounds including linear and branched paraffins, naphthenes, olefins and aromatics. Their behavior can be effectively reproduced by simpler fuel surrogates containing a limited number of components. Aside the most commonly used surrogates containing iso-octane and n-heptane only, the so called Primary Reference Fuels (PRF), new mixtures have recently been suggested to extend the reference components in surrogate mixtures to also include alkenes and aromatics. It is generally agreed that, including representative species for all the main classes of hydrocarbons which can be found in real fuels, it is possible to reproduce very effectively in a wide range of operating conditions not just the auto-ignition propensity of gasoline or Diesel fuels, but also their physical properties and their combustion residuals [1]. In this work, the combustion behavior of several components relevant to gasoline surrogate formulation is computationally examined. The attention is focused on the autoignition of iso-octane, hexene and their mixtures. Some important issues relevant to the experimental and modeling investigation of such fuels are discussed with the help of rapid compression machine data and calculations. Following the model validation, the behavior of mixtures is discussed on the basis of computational results.