Oxidation of Alkane Rich Gasoline Fuels and their Surrogates in a Motored Engine

Abstract

The validation of surrogates formulated using a computational framework by Ahmed et al.[1]for two purely paraffinic gasoline fuels labelled FACE A and FACE C was undertaken in this study. The ability of these surrogate mixtures to be used in modelling LTC engines was accessed by comparison of their low temperature oxidation chemistry with that of the respective parent fuel as well as a PRF based on RON. This was done by testing the surrogate mixtures in a modified Cooperative Fuels Research (CFR) engine running in Controlled Autoignition Mode (CAI) mode. The engine was run at a constant speed of 600 rpm at an equivalence ratio of 0.5 with the intake temperature at 150 °C and a pressure of 98 kPa. The low temperature reactivity of the fuels were studied by varying the compression ratio of the engine from the point were very only small low temperature heat release was observed to a point beyond which auto-ignition of the fuel/air mixture occurred. The apparent heat release rates of different fuels was calculated from the pressure histories using first law analysis and the CA 50 times of the low temperature heat release (LTHR) were compared. The surrogates reproduced the cool flame behavior of the parent fuels better than the PRF across all compression ratios.