Design and assessment of suitable surrogate fuels for diesel fuel modelling

For the next decade, the diesel fuelled compression ignition combustion technology is expected to remain as one of the most efficient, practical, and cost-effective means of delivering power for vehicular and stationary applications. Transforming and bringing cleaner and more efficient engine technologies from the research and development laboratories to the end consumer (market) is both cost and time intensive. Computational modelling of the diesel fuel, the combustion process and the resulting emissions serves as a practical tool to gain insight and design better (less polluting and more efficient) engines of tomorrow. However, in order to provide reliable predictions, a model needs to account for the detailed evolution of a large number of chemical species in addition to complex sub-processes such as turbulence and heat transfer occurring in an engine. In this work, we systematically develop a mathematical description in the form of a chemical mechanism that describes the combustion and formation of emissions from combustion of diesel fuel. The model will be rigorously validated against experiments under practical engine conditions. We expect to gain a better understanding of the characteristics of soot emissions, namely, the morphology, composition, size and density, based on which new techniques can be derived to reduce these harmful pollutants. The results from the proposed work will be disseminated in the public domain using open-source initiatives to the benefit of the scientific community and the society at large.