A high pressure shock/detonation tube facility for the study of combustion characteristics and detonation properties of future alternative fuels

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The Combustion Laboratory of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Concordia University requests equipments funded under the NSERC Research Tools and Instruments Grants (RTI) to install a high-pressure shock/detonation tube facility. This major facility includes a high-pressure resistant shock/detonation tube apparatus, a vacuum/gas manifold system and a specially designed high-pressure flow metering/mixing system. The requested components also comprise a multi-purpose diagnostic equipment set that includes a high resolution spectrometer, high-pressure piezoelectric transducers and a high-speed video camera. These instruments will allow for a wide range of basic diagnostics and measurements such as photographic study, emission spectroscopy, and record of transient pressure evolutions.      The requested equipments will be used to support experimental research on the combustion characteristics and safety aspects of future alternative energy fuels (such as hydrogen, syngas, dimethyl ether and other biofuels) at high-pressure conditions relevant to storage, engine and turbine applications. Specifically, the research is to examine different alternative fuel properties by measuring the ignition delay, explosion properties such as detonation cell size, critical tube and failure diameters, major stable gas species for validating chemical kinetics models, fuel pyrolysis under thermal heating at high pressure and by visualizing different unsteady fluid dynamics using high-speed photography. These experimental results will not only provide key data to assess potential hazards of future use of alternative fuels and to improve internal combustion engine designs or novel micro-propulsion concepts, but also provide fundamental knowledge on unsteady flame and explosion dynamics, high pressure/high temperature chemistry and turbulence interactions in chemically reactive flow. The equipments will create opportunities to collaborate with different academic units at Canada and automobile/aerospace industries. The proposed program belongs to the alternative energy system research supported by recent NSERC reallocations exercises.