Development of Reduced Reaction Mechanisms for Ethylene and Ethanol Diffusion Flames

Abstract

The ethanol (C2H5OH) is frequently mentioned as an alternative fuel that can be produced from renewable energy resources. It can be used as an automotive fuel in the hydrated form or mixed with gasoline. A skeletal chemical kinetic mechanism describing the combustion of ethanol is presented by Marinov; this mechanism is composed by 351 reversible reactions among 56 species, describing the high temperature oxidation of it. The aim of this work is the development of reduced reaction mechanisms for ethanol and ethylene diffusion flames. The process to obtain the reduced mechanism for ethanol and ethylene is initially based on the velocity and concentration of each elementary reaction, then one employs the Intrinsic Low-Dimensional Manifold (ILDM) technique. Numerical tests show that the main advantage of the reduced reaction mechanism is the decrease of the cost necessary to solve the system of equations for diffusion flames.