As regulatory measures for improved fuel economy and decreased emissions are pushing gasoline engine combustion technologies towards extreme conditions (i.e., boosted and intercooled intake with exhaust gas recirculation), fuel ignition characteristics become increasingly important for enabling stable operation. This study explores the effects of chemical composition on the fundamental ignition behavior of gasoline fuels. Two well-characterized, high-octane, non-oxygenated FACE (Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines) gasolines, FACE F and FACE G, having similar antiknock indices but different octane sensitivities and chemical compositions are studied. Ignition experiments were conducted in shock tubes and a rapid compression machine (RCM) at nominal pressures of 20 and 40 atm, equivalence ratios of 0.5 and 1.0, and temperatures ranging from 650 to 1270 K. Results at temperatures above 900 K indicate that ignition delay time is similar for these fuels. However, RCM measurements below 900 K demonstrate a stronger negative temperature coefficient behavior for the FACE F gasoline having lower octane sensitivity. In addition, RCM pressure profiles under two-stage ignition conditions illustrate that the magnitude of low-temperature heat release (LTHR) increases with decreasing fuel octane sensitivity. However, intermediate-temperature heat release is shown to increase as fuel octane sensitivity increases. Various surrogate fuel mixtures were formulated to conduct chemical kinetic modeling, and complex KAUST multicomponent surrogate mixtures were shown to reproduce experimentally observed trends better than simpler two-and three-component mixtures composed of n-heptane, iso-octane, and toluene. Measurements in a Cooperative Fuels Research (CFR) engine demonstrated that the KAUST multicomponent surrogates accurately captured the antiknock quality of the FACE gasolines. Simulations were performed using multicomponent surrogates for FACE F and G to reveal the underlying chemical kinetics linking fuel composition with ignition characteristics. A key discovery of this work is the kinetic coupling between aromatics and naphthenes, which affects the radical pool population and thereby controls ignition.

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A laminar toroidal vortex is interacted with a laminar premixed flame in order to isolate and to visualize some of the fundamental physics of turbulent combustion. Localized quenching of the flame was observed using planar laser-induced fluorescence imaging of superequilibrium OH molecules in the counterflow flamefront region near the vortex leading edge. A quenching limit curve was measured as a function of vortex size and strength. In the second part of the study, the measurements are combined with concepts proposed by Poinsot, Veynante, and Candel in order to infer the thin flame limit, namely, the onset of distributed reactions, on a classical premixed turbulent combustion regime diagram. The measured thin flame limit indicates when laminar flamelet theories become invalid, since quenching allows hot products and reactants to coexist. Results are compared with the Klimov-Williams criterion. Vortex core diameters were as small as the flame thickness in some cases. The main conclusion is that small vortices are less effective at quenching a flame than was previously believed; therefore the inferred regime within which thin flame theories are valid extends to a turbulence intensity that is more than an order of magnitude larger than that which was previously predicted. Results also indicate that micromixing models, which assume that the smallest eddies exert the largest strain on a flame, are not realistic. Measured trends are in agreement with direct numerical simulations of Poinsot et al., but absolute values differ. The measured vortex Karlovitz number that is required to quench a flame is not constant but decreases by a factor of four as vortex size increases from one to five flame thicknesses. Thin-film pyrometry was used to quantify the radiative heat losses; quenching occurs when the products cool to approximately 1300 K, which is in agreement with stretched laminar flame calculations that include detailed chemistry. The quenching Karlovitz number for propane-air flames differs from that of methane-air flames, indicating the importance of detailed chemistry and transport properties. Flame curvature was observed to cause enhancement (or reduction) of the local reaction rate, depending on the Lewis number, in a manner that is consistent with stretched flame theory. microscale (U'rms/A)/(SL/,~) to equal unity. This prediction has been denoted the Klimov-Williams criterion [2]; the Taylor microscale (A) is assumed to be the appropriate

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ABSTRACT:There is an increasing interest in comprehensive study of heavy fuel oil (HFO) due to its growing use in furnaces, boilers, marines, and recently in gas turbines. In this work, the thermal combustion characteristics and chemical composition of HFO were investigated using a range of techniques. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted to study the non-isothermal HFO combustion behavior. Chemical characterization of HFO was accomplished using various standard methods in addition to direct infusion atmospheric pressure chemical ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (APCI-FTICR MS), high resolution 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), 13 C NMR, and two dimensional hetero-nuclear multiple bond correlation (HMBC) spectroscopy. By analyzing thermogravimetry and differential thermogravimetry (TG/DTG) results, three different reaction regions were identified in the combustion of HFO with air, specifically, low temperature oxidation region (LTO), fuel deposition (FD) and high temperature oxidation (HTO) region. At the high end of the LTO region, a mass transfer resistance (skin effect) was evident. Kinetic analysis in LTO and HT|O regions was conducted using two different kinetic models to calculate the apparent activation energy. In both models, HTO activation energies are higher than those for LTO. The FT-ICR MS technique resolved thousands of aromatic and sulfur containing compounds in the HFO sample and provided compositional details for individual molecules of three major class species. The major classes of compounds included species with one sulfur atom (S 1 ), with two sulfur atoms 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 2 (S 2 ), and purely hydrocarbons (HC). The DBE (double bond equivalent) abundance plots established for S 1 and HC provided additional information on their distributions in the HFO sample. The 1 H NMR and 13 C NMR results revealed that nearly 59% of the 1 H nuclei were distributed as paraffinic CH 2 and 5% were in aromatic groups. Nearly 21% of 13 C nuclei were distributed in aromatic groups indicating that most paraffinic CH 2 groups are attached to aromatic rings. A negligible amount of olefins was present and an appreciable quantity of monoaromatic and poly-aromatic content were observed. Molecular connectivity between the hydrogen and carbon atoms using HMBC spectra was utilized to propose several plausible skeletal structures in HFO.