Rahimakhanim Babayeva

Rahima Babayeva is a PhD student in Energy 2050 and the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

She is currently undertaking a PhD in Resilient Decarbonised Fuel Energy Systems, in a degree sponsored by EPSRC and Rolls Royce. Rahima is supervised by Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian, Dr Ehsan Alborzi and Dr Marco Zedda (Industrial Supervisor, Rolls Royce).

Speaking about her work, Rahima explained:

"Decarbonisation in aviation sector in the UK requires the production and utilisation of sustainable aviation field from renewable sources, as a blend with petroleum based fuel and/or standalone replacements, in line with net zero emissions target by 2050. However, due to the technical suitability concerns, sustainable aviation fuels are required to go through more stringent criteria for their approval and certifications, with respect to the fit-for purpose properties.

"The proposed research will explore the underlying physico-chemical interactions of sustainable aviation fuels in an auto-oxidative regime in order to identify/minimise the risk of fuel degradation. The proposed research requires construction of a chemical kinetic model as a predictive tool for agglomeration and deposition of agglomerated materials on the heated surface of fuel system (stainless steel).

"The kinetic parameters as well as thermochemistry for the mechanism will be calculated using quantum chemistry codes (ORCA and Vienna Ab-initio Simulation package). Small-scale test devices such as Petroxy and fluidised bath reaction will be employed for the experimental part of the fuel thermal degradation.

The chemical composition of sustainable aviation fuel and the thermally degraded products will be identified/quantifies with a two-dimensional gas chromatography times of flight mass spectrometry."