On the combustion characteristics and safety aspects of future alternative fuels

为了解决与能源相关的气体排放和供应问题的环境问题，迫切需要研究替代燃料和能源系统，如氢气，合成气，二甲醚和生物燃料。必须以足够的信心理解与替代燃料的生产、处理、运输和储存相关的燃烧特性和安全方面，以便使公众接受这些替代燃料的广泛使用，并转向这些可能的燃料经济性。提出了一个为期五年的实验和计算研究计划，以调查潜在的未来替代燃料的燃烧特性和爆轰特性。目标是获得新的实验燃烧和爆震数据，特别是在与真实的储存和发动机/燃气涡轮机应用相关的高压条件下，并开发能够阐明爆震结构演变行为、火焰加速过程、爆燃到爆震转变、分散/混合动力学和约束边界和可压缩湍流的替代燃料系统中的效果。化学动力学分析也进行了探索在不同的初始条件下的替代燃料的反应灵敏度，设计燃料混合物，以提高安全性，平衡的效果之间的点火容易和抗爆震（发动机爆震）的发动机设计，并改善排放控制。该项目将系统地优化和减少目前可用的动力学模型适用于计算流体力学使用先进的数学技术。

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.