Experimental and modeling study of the kinetics of oxidation of ethanol-n-heptane mixtures in a jet-stirred reactor

The kinetics of oxidation of ethanol-n-heptane mixtures (20-80 and 50-50 mol.%) was studied experimentally using a fused-silica jet-stirred reactor. The experiments were performed in the temperature range 530-1070 K, at 10 atm, at two equivalence ratios (0.5 and 1), and with an initial fuel concentration of 750 ppm. A kinetic modeling was performed using schemes resulting from the merging of validated kinetic schemes for the oxidation of the components of the present mixtures (n-heptane and ethanol). Good agreement between the experimental results and the computations was observed under the present conditions when using detailed chemistry whereas the used of semi-detailed chemistry yielded acceptable but less accurate prediction of the fuel oxidation kinetics. (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.