Theoretical Prediction of Laminar Burning Speed and Ignition Delay of Gas to Liquid Fuel

Gas to Liquid (GTL), an alternative synthetic jet fuel derived from natural gas has gained significant attention recently due to its cleaner combustion characteristics when compared to conventional counterparts. The effect of chemical composition on key performance aspects such as ignition delay time, laminar burning speed, and emission characteristics have been experimentally studied. However, the development of chemical kinetics mechanism to predict those parameters for GTL fuel is still in its early stage. In this work, a detailed kinetics model (DKM) has been developed based on the chemical kinetics reported for GTL surrogate fuels. The DKM is applied to the chemical kinetic mechanism of 597 species and 3853 reactions. The DKM is employed in a constant internal energy and constant volume reactor to predict the ignition delay times for GTL and its three surrogates over a wide range of initial temperature, pressure and equivalence ratio. The ignition delay times predicted using DKM are validated with those reported in the literature. Furthermore, the CANTERA freely propagating 1D flame code is used in conjunction with the chemical kinetic mechanism to predict the laminar burning speeds for GTL fuel over a wide range of operating conditions.