Kinetics of Oxidation of a 100% Gas to Liquid Synthetic Jet Fuel and a Mixture GtL/1 Hexanol in a Jet Stirred Reactor: Experimental and Modeling Study

Abstract

Research activities on the combustion of synthetic jet fuels and bioderived jet fuels have increased notably over the last 10 yr in order to solve the challenging reduction of dependence of air transportation on petroleum. Within the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme, the combustion of a 100% GtL from Shell and a 80/20% vol. GtL/1hexanol blend were studied in a jetstirred reactor (JSR). This synthetic GtL fuel mainly contains nalkanes, isoalkanes, and cycloalkanes. We studied the oxidation of these alternative jet fuels under the same conditions (temperature, 550–1150 K; pressure, 10 bar; equivalence ratio, 0.5–2; initial fuel concentration, 1000 ppm). For simulating the oxidation kinetics of these fuels we used a new surrogate mixture consisting of ndodecane, 3methylheptane, npropylcyclohexane, and 1hexanol. A detailed chemical kinetic reaction mechanism was developed and validated by comparison with the experimental results obtained in a JSR. The current model was also tested for the autoignition of the GtL fuel under shock tubes conditions (د†â€‰= 1 and P = 20 atm) using data from the literature. Kinetic computations involving reaction paths analyses and sensitivity analyses were used to interpret the results. The general findings are that the GtL and GtL/hexanol blend have very similar reactivity to Jet A1, which is important since GtL is a dropin fuel that should have similar performance to the Jet A1 baseline and 1hexanol should not significantly affect the reactivity if it is to be used as an additive.