Oxidation of commercial and surrogate bio-Diesel fuels (B30) in a jet-stirred reactor at elevated pressure: Experimental and modeling kinetic study

The oxidation of a commercial B30 (30% FAME by vol.) bio-Diesel fuel and a B30 bio-Diesel surrogate fuel (49% n-decane, CAS 124-18-5; 21% 1-methylnaphthalene, CAS 90-12-0; 30% methyl octanoate, CAS 111-11-5, in mole) was performed using a pressurized fused-silica jet-stirred reactor under the same initial experimental conditions (560–1030 K, 6 and 10 atm, equivalence ratios of 0.25–1.5, 10,300 ppm of carbon). The results of this series of experiments consisted of concentration profiles of reactants, stable intermediates and products measured as a function of temperature by low-pressure probe sampling followed by Fourier transform infrared absorption spectrometry and gas chromatography analyses. The results obtained with the commercial and surrogate B30 mixtures were compared with each other, showing that the mixture n-decane/1-methylnaphthalene/methyl octanoate 49/21/30% in mole is an excellent simple B30 Diesel fuel surrogate. A detailed chemical kinetic reaction mechanism consisting of 7748 reactions involving 1964 species was proposed based on previous chemical kinetic reaction mechanisms for the oxidation of n-decane, methyl octanoate, and 1-methylnaphthalene under similar conditions. The kinetic modeling showed reasonable agreement between the present data and computations over the entire range of conditions considered in this study.