Numerical study of the combustion of conventional and biofuels using reduced and advanced reaction mechanisms

Abstract

Combustion process of conventional liquid fuels and biofuels depend on many factors including thermo-physicochemical properties associated with such fuels, their chemical structure and the combustion infrastructure used. This manuscript summarises the computational results of a steady CFD simulation for reactive flows performed to validate advanced reaction mechanisms for both conventional and biofuels. The computational results have shown good agreement with the available experimental data with the differences thoroughly discussed and explained. An important observations and findings reported in this work was that when comprehensive reaction models were used, the injected fuels burned at a slower rate compared to the situation when reduced models were employed. While such comprehensive models predicted better flame structure and far better biproducts compared to the existing experimental results, it has also led to over-predicting the temperature field. The computational results have also shown that biodiesel produces a marginally higher rate of carbon dioxide compared to diesel. Such results are thought to be due to the oxygenated nature of the fuel and how such feature influences the development of a comprehensive reaction mechanism for such fuels.