On the combustion characteristics and safety aspects of future alternative fuels

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

In order to address energy related environmental issues of gas emissions and supply problems, there is an urgent need to investigate alternative fuels and energy systems such as hydrogen, syngas, dimethyl ether and bio-fuels. The combustion properties and the safety aspects associated with production, handling, transportation and storage of alternative fuels must be understood with a sufficient level of confidence in order to achieve public acceptance of wide spread utilization of these alternative fuels and to migrate to these possible fuel economies. A five-year experimental and computational research program is proposed to investigate the combustion characteristics and detonation properties of potential future alternative fuels. The objectives are to obtain new experimental combustion and detonation data particularly at high pressure conditions relevant to real storage and engine/gas turbine applications and to develop advanced mathematical/computational models capable of elucidating the fundamental mechanisms that underlie the evolutionary behavior of the detonation structure, the processes for flame acceleration, deflagration to detonation transition, dispersion/mixing dynamics and effect of the confining boundary and compressible turbulence in the alternative fuels systems. Chemical kinetics analyses are also carried out to explore the reaction sensitivity of the alternative fuels at different initial conditions, to design fuel blends for increasing safety, to balance the effect between ease of ignition and resistance to detonation (engine knock) in engine design, and to improve emission control. This project will systematically optimize and reduce the currently available kinetics models suitable for computational fluid dynamics using advanced mathematical techniques.