Investigations into the Combustion Kinetics of Several Novel Oxygenated Fuels

In this thesis, attention was paid to several novel oxygenated fuels-carbonates, polyethers and ketones. Combustion kinetic investigations were performed for typical representative compounds, including dimethyl carbonate, diethyl carbonate, cyclopentanone, 3-pentanone, 1,2-dimethoxyethane and dimethoxymethane. For experiments, suitable diagnostic techniques were used to measure the detailed speciation information of the target fuels under different conditions. For kinetic modeling, rate coefficients for crucial elementary reactions were obtained through high-level theoretical calculations. Based on that, validated kinetic models with good predictive performances were developed. 

On the basis of experimental measurements and model interpretations, this work highlighted two important combustion characteristics regarding the practical use: the pollutant formation and the ignition performance. Besides, the correlation between oxygen-containing functional groups and the aforementioned combustion characteristics was revealed. To reveal the potential interactions between the reaction networks of oxygenated additives and the hydrocarbon base fuels during combustion. Chemical structures of laminar premixed flames fueled by binary fuels were measured, and by changing the initial fuel compositions, the addition effects of the oxygenates on the fuel consumption and pollutant formation behaviors were explored. It was found that complicated chemical interactions do not exist in the reaction networks under the investigated conditions.

Dr. Wenyu Sun received his B.E. degree from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Hubei , China, in 2013 and the Ph.D. degree in Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2018. Dr. Sun received Bernard Lewis Fellowship from International Combustion Institute, 2018. His Ph.D.thesis was nominated as The Excellent Ph.D. Thesis of Tsinghua University in 2018.

Dr. Sun's work work is centered on combustion kinetics of oxygenated fuels by using experimental, kinetic modeling and theoretical methods. He has published more than 20 scientific papers since 2017. He also serves as reviewer for the journals Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, Combustion Science and Technology since 2017.