On the combustion characteristics and safety aspects of future alternative fuels

为了解决与能源有关的气体排放和供应问题的环境问题，迫切需要研究氢、合成气、二甲醚和生物燃料等替代燃料和能源系统。必须以足够的信心了解与替代燃料的生产、处理、运输和储存有关的燃烧特性和安全方面，以便使公众接受广泛使用这些替代燃料，并转向使用这些可能的燃料经济。提出了一项为期五年的实验和计算研究计划，以研究潜在的未来替代燃料的燃烧特性和爆震特性。目标是获得新的实验燃烧和爆轰数据，特别是在与实际储存和发动机/燃气轮机应用相关的高压条件下，并开发能够阐明爆轰结构进化行为的基本机制的先进数学/计算模型，火焰加速过程，爆燃到爆轰过渡，替代燃料系统中分散/混合动力学及围界和可压缩湍流的影响。通过化学动力学分析，探讨了不同初始条件下替代燃料的反应敏感性，设计了提高安全性的混合燃料，在发动机设计中平衡了易燃性和耐爆震性（发动机爆震）的影响，并改进了排放控制。本项目将使用先进的数学技术系统地优化和减少目前可用的适合计算流体动力学的动力学模型。

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.