Investigation of Surrogate Models for Combustion Simulation of Palm Oil Methyl Ester

Palm oil methyl ester (PME) has attracted attention as a green fuel because of its stable supply. In this study, can-didates for a PME surrogate fuel were selected with good imitation characteristic and repeatability for real fuel, and a PME surrogate model with excellent predictability of combustion performance was explored to perform a univer-sal evaluation of their combustion performance through numerical simulation. Methyl esters exhibit similar combus-tion characteristics regardless of their carbon chain length. Therefore, linear methyl esters such as methyl butanoate (C5I-Ii0O2), methyl octanoate (C9H18O2), and methyl decanoate (C11H22O2) were selected as candidates for the PME surrogate fuel because they are readily available and have a gross heat value similar to real PMEs. In addition, the igni-tion delay time and laminar flame speed of each methyl ester in the detailed reaction mechanisms were compared for the specification of the PME surrogate model. As a result, the detailed reaction model of methyl octanoate constructed by Dayma et al. (2011) was found to have the closest value to the experimental value for the ignition delay time. Then, as a result of comparing the laminar flame speeds, the reaction model for methyl butanoate constructed by Gail et al. (2007) was found to be the closest to the trend obtained from the experimental results with respect to the laminar com-bustion rate.