Thermophysical properties needed for the development of the supercritical diesel combustion technology: Evaluation of diesel fuel surrogate models

Development of supercritical fuel combustion technology requires reliable data on fuel properties. In this paper, twenty diesel fuel surrogates (DFSs) have been evaluated for representing real diesel fuel (DF) properties including critical point, density, heat capacity, viscosity and thermal conductivity. The critical temperatures of DF were estimated to be 717–745 K largely depending on DF distillation profiles, while those of DFSs varied significantly from 540 to 734 K and only those of DFSs #5(n-hexadecane), #17 and #19 were within the range for DF. The best predictions of density, heat capacity, viscosity and thermal conductivity of DF were achieved by DFSs #8 (AAD = 0.3%), #4 (1.5%), #20 (13%) and #14 (1.7%), respectively, and DFS #4 (n-tetradecane) had the best overall performance with an AAD of 8%. Finally, a simple methodology has been demonstrated for the evaluation of DFSs, and the current results lead to the best predictions of DF thermophysical properties.

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► A methodology has been demonstrated for fuel surrogate evaluation.
► Surrogates are recommended to estimate more reliable diesel fuel properties.
► Critical points of diesel fuel and surrogates were estimated.
► Physical properties of diesel fuel were predicted at temperatures up to 800 K.