Kinetic modeling of gasoline surrogate components and mixtures under engine conditions

Real fuels are complex mixtures of thousands of hydrocarbon compounds including linear and branched paraffins, naphthenes, olefins and aromatics. It is generally agreed that their behavior can be effectively reproduced by simpler fuel surrogates containing a limited number of components. In this work, an improved version of the kinetic model by the authors is used to analyze the combustion behavior of several components relevant to gasoline surrogate formulation. Particular attention is devoted to linear and branched saturated hydrocarbons (PRF mixtures), olefins (1-hexene) and aromatics (toluene). Model predictions for pure components, binary mixtures and multi-component gasoline surrogates are compared with recent experimental information collected in rapid compression machine, shock tube and jet stirred reactors covering a wide range of conditions pertinent to internal combustion engines (350 atm, 650-1200 K, stoichiometric fuel/air mixtures). Simulation results are discussed focusing attention on the mixing effects of the fuel components. (C) 2010 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.