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Developing Surrogates for Liquid Transportation Fuels: The Role of Spherically Symmetric Droplet Combustion

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Novel Combustion Concepts for Sustainable Energy Development

Abstract

The finite supply of transportation fuels has generated renewed interest to improve their performance in power and propulsion devices. However, the complexity of real fuels prohibits developing their combustion chemistries and property databases needed for simulating performance in engines to identify operational regimes for improving fuel efficiency. Surrogates offer the means to address these concerns if they can be shown to replicate certain combustion targets of the real fuel, and to result in combustion properties similar to real fuels when burned in a suitable configuration that is amenable to detailed numerical modeling. This paper examines the role which droplet combustion can play in the development of surrogates for complex transportation fuels. Recognizing that spray combustion is far too difficult to model and that droplets represent the fine-grid structure of sprays, the combustion dynamics of fuel droplets are examined in an environment that seeks to remove external convective influences to simplify the transport field and produce spherical symmetry in the droplet burning process that can be modeled using a detailed numerical simulation approach. The one-dimensional flames and transport dynamics that result are shown to be well positioned to evaluate the efficacy of surrogate fuel performance. Recent efforts are summarized that have used the spherical droplet flame configuration to evaluate the performance of surrogate fuel blends. Experiments are discussed for promoting spherical symmetry, and results are presented to show the efficacy of some surrogate blends to replicate the performance of gasoline and jet fuels using the spherical droplet configuration. Some results are also included from detailed numerical modeling of biodiesel droplets that incorporate complex combustion chemistry, and unsteady transport, vaporization, and variable property effects that illustrate the potential for high fidelity predictions needed for developing surrogates using the spherically symmetric droplet flame configuration.

This paper is based on a presentation given at the Indo-US International Workshop on Novel Combustion for Sustainable Energy Development, Kanpur, India, January 2–4, 2014.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A combustion “target” is defined here as a variable used for matching a surrogate with a real fuel (e.g., molecular weight, derived cetane number, liquid density). A combustion “property” is defined as a variable measured in a combustion configuration.

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Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported in part by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration grant no. NNX08AI51G with Mr. Michael Hicks as the project monitor. The author also benefitted from discussions with Dr. Y.C Liu of the University of Michigan-Flint and Mr. Yuhao Xu of Cornell University. The author is pleased to acknowledge this essential help in the course of his work on droplet combustion processes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853-7501, USA

    C. Thomas Avedisian

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  1. C. Thomas Avedisian
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Correspondence to C. Thomas Avedisian .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Avinash K Agarwal

  2. Centre for Biofuels and Biotechnology Division, NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

    Ashok Pandey

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

    Ashwani K. Gupta

  4. Flow and Combustion Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Suresh K. Aggarwal

  5. Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Abhijit Kushari

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Avedisian, C.T. (2014). Developing Surrogates for Liquid Transportation Fuels: The Role of Spherically Symmetric Droplet Combustion. In: Agarwal, A., Pandey, A., Gupta, A., Aggarwal, S., Kushari, A. (eds) Novel Combustion Concepts for Sustainable Energy Development. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2211-8_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2211-8_16

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