Ignition of alkane-rich FACE gasoline fuels and their surrogate mixtures

Petroleum derived gasoline is the most used transportation fuel for light-duty vehicles. In order to better understand gasoline combustion, this study investigated the ignition propensity of two alkane-rich FACE (Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines) gasoline test fuels and their corresponding PRF (primary reference fuel) blend in fundamental combustion experiments. Shock tube ignition delay times were measured in two separate facilities at pressures of 10, 20, and 40 bar, temperatures from 715 to 1500 K, and two equivalence ratios. Rapid compression machine ignition delay times were measured for fuel/air mixtures at pressures of 20 and 40 bar, temperatures from 632 to 745 K, and two equivalence ratios. Detailed hydrocarbon analysis was also performed on the FACE gasoline fuels, and the results were used to formulate multi-component gasoline surrogate mixtures. Detailed chemical kinetic modeling results are presented herein to provide insights into the relevance of utilizing PRF and multi-component surrogate mixtures to reproduce the ignition behavior of the alkane-rich FACE gasoline fuels. The two FACE gasoline fuels and their corresponding PRF mixture displayed similar ignition behavior at intermediate and high temperatures, but differences were observed at low temperatures. These trends were mimicked by corresponding surrogate mixture models, except for the amount of heat release in the first stage of a two-stage ignition events, when observed. © 2014 The Combustion Institute.

Citation

Sarathy, S. M., Kukkadapu, G., Mehl, M., Wang, W., Javed, T., Park, S., … Sung, C.-J. (2015). Ignition of alkane-rich FACE gasoline fuels and their surrogate mixtures. Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 35(1), 249–257. doi:10.1016/j.proci.2014.05.122

Sponsors

The authors are grateful to Hendrik Muller (Saudi Aramco R&DC), Abdulla Algam (Saudi Aramco R&DC), Mr. Emad Alawi, and Nadim Hourani (KAUST) for the DHA results. The KAUST authors acknowledge funding support from the Clean Combustion Research Center and from Saudi Aramco under the FUELCOM program. The work at the University of Connecticut was supported as part of the Combustion Energy Frontier Research Center, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Award Number DE-SC0001198. The Rensselaer group was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant No. FA9550-11-1-0261) with Dr. Chiping Li as technical monitor. The LLNL work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Vehicle Technologies, Gurpreet Singh, program manager.