Numerical characterization of different n-decane-ethanol blends combustion

MARINA WEYL COSTA; DARIO ALVISO; NASSER DARABIHA; ROGERIO GONCALVES DOS SANTOS

Rio de Janeiro

Congreso; 23rd ABCM International Congress of Mechanical Engineering - COBEM2015; 2015

ABCM

Research and investments in renewable energy are important to reduce oil dependence, to improve energetic safety and to reduce environmental and public health damages caused by combustion emissions. Currently, diesel is the most popular fossil fuel in several countries, including Brazil, Paraguay and France. Sugar cane ethanol is widely used as fuel in Brazil, but only in Otto cycle engines. Nevertheless there are diverse researches revealing that it can be added to diesel and reduce particulate matter emissions of Diesel cycle engines among other advantages. Due to diesel chemical complexity, n-decane is usually used as a diesel simplified surrogate fuel. The objective of this work is to unveil the effects of ethanol addition in n-decane combustion. REGATH package was used in numerical simulation. A new chemical scheme was developed putting together two already validated chemical schemes simulating 1D premixed laminar flames. This scheme allows prediction of several combustion characteristics. Blends ranging from 5% to 30% ethanol (mol) were simulated with equivalence ratios ranging from 0.8 to 1.4. For each blend, flame speed, flame thickness, maximum temperature and CO and CO 2 emissions were obtained. Blends results were similar to n-decane results, unveiling that the studied combustion properties did not change for ethanol proportions added.