Combustion of Supercritical Spray under High-Pressure and High-Temperature Conditions

由于人们越来越意识到碳足迹对气候变化的影响，减少碳足迹的必要性变得更加普遍。尽管交通运输领域的电气化正在迅速发展，通过混合动力来提高效率，但在未来几十年里，碳氢化合物燃烧仍将是主要的推进选择，尤其是在重型、船舶和航空领域。这个项目将研究一种使用超临界流体的新的燃烧概念。它将推进和提供有关超临界喷雾在内燃机中的应用的新知识。所提出的技术的成功采用可以大大减少燃料消耗和污染物排放，有利于环境和能源安全。此外，该项目将为整合研究和教育提供极好的机会。研究生和本科生，特别是来自代表性不足和多元化群体的学生，将参与研究。本项目的研究成果将有助于丰富现有课程中的三门课程。研究结果也可以用来服务于工程界，并激励年轻一代（K-12学生）在未来攻读STEM专业。该提案的假设是超临界喷雾燃烧与传统喷雾燃烧相比具有明显不同的混合、点火、燃烧和污染物形成过程，了解其基本原理有助于实现适合许多新兴应用的清洁高效燃料燃烧。本研究的目的是通过实验证明超临界燃料燃烧，并量化其对空气-燃料混合、点火、燃烧和污染物排放的影响。超临界喷雾燃烧是一个新兴领域，尽管在下一代压燃发动机和其他燃烧装置中有潜在的应用前景，但尚未得到很好的研究。除了对超临界喷雾渗透、混合、燃烧和污染物形成的基本认识外，这项研究将对未来柴油发动机的性能产生重大影响。实际上，拟议的研究将有可能改变内燃机的高燃油效率和超低排放。本课题的研究将从根本上填补极端超临界条件下喷雾燃烧的知识空白。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The need to decrease our carbon footprint becomes more prevalent due to the increased awareness of its effect on climate change. Although electrification of the transportation sector is moving forward rapidly to increase efficiency through hybridization, combustion of hydrocarbons will continue to be the dominant choice for propulsion for many decades to come, especially the heavy duty, marine, and aviation applications. This project will investigate a new combustion concept using supercritical fluids. It will advance and provide new knowledge pertaining to the applications of supercritical spray in combustion engines. The successful adoption of the proposed techniques can dramatically reduce the fuel consumption and pollutant emissions, benefiting the environment and energy security. Additionally, this project will provide an excellent opportunity for integrating research and education. Graduate and undergraduate students, particularly from underrepresented and diversified groups, will be involved in the research. The research outcome from this project will help enrich three courses within the current curriculum. The results can also be used to serve the engineering community and to motivate the younger generation (K-12 students) to pursue STEM majors in the future.The hypothesis of this proposal is that supercritical spray combustion has significantly different mixing, ignition, combustion, and pollutant formation processes from conventional spray combustion and understanding the fundamentals can help achieve clean and efficient fuel combustion suitable for many emerging applications. The objective of this research is to experimentally demonstrate supercritical fuel combustion and quantify its impact on air-fuel mixing, ignition, combustion, and the production of pollutant emissions. Supercritical spray combustion is a novel area that has not been well studied despite potential applications in next-generation compression-ignition engines and other combustion devices. Besides fundamental understanding of supercritical spray penetration, mixing, combustion, and pollutant formation, this study will have significant impact on the performance of future diesel engines. Practically, the proposed research will have the potential to transform combustion engines with high fuel efficiency and ultra-low emissions. Fundamentally, the proposal research will fill the knowledge gap for spray combustion under extreme supercritical conditions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.