Alternative aviation fuels kinetic mechanism development

Supervisors: Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian and Dr Kevin Hughes.

Experimental investigations into alternative fuel performance, in flames and jet-stirred reactors provide a wealth of data to aid the development of chemical kinetic models of the combustion process. In this project, these models will be enhanced based on a survey of current literature developments.

Sensitivity analysis tools will allow the identification of the most important reactions within the models themselves, and where there is significant uncertainty in the reaction rate data, the GAUSSIAN 09 software package will be employed to determine thermodynamic and structural properties thus allowing improved estimations of the rate parameters for these important reactions.

For further information contact Professor Derek B Ingham (d.ingham@sheffield.ac.uk).