Detailed numerical modelling of alkane oxidation and spontaneous ignition

6 DETAILED NUMERICAL MODELLING OF ALKANE OXIDATION AND SPONTANEOUS IGNITION 

The construction of a comprehensive kinetic model to represent the oxidation of a hydrocarbon, incorporating the best available kinetic parameters, permits a quantitative link to be forged by numerical computation between detailed chemical measurements and the interpretation of the underlying kinetics and mechanism of the combustion system. The first step is the simulation of composition-time profiles for intermediate and final products under conditions resembling the experimental study, as a validation of the model itself. Further insight may then be gained into the 

The establishment of a detailed kinetic model provides an opportunity for the numerical prediction of the behaviour of a chemical system under conditions that may not be accessible by experimental means. However, large-scale models with many variables may require considerable computer resource for their implementation, especially under non-isothermal conditions, for which stiffness of the system of differential equations for mass and energy to be integrated is a problem. Computation in a spatial domain, for which partial differential expressions are appropriate, becomes considerably more demanding. There are also many important fluid mechanical problems in reactive systems, the detailed kinetic representation of the chemistry for which would be highly desirable, but cannot yet be computed economically. In such circumstances there is a place for the use of reduced or simplified kinetic models, as discussed in Chapter 7. Thus, 

By 1984, the model of Westbrook and co-workers to represent the high-temperature combustion of hydrocarbons, up to and including the C4 alkanes and (to some extent) alkene isomers, incorporated 255 reversible 

The inclusion of reactions to represent the low-temperature chemistry in a detailed model for n-butane oxidation at high pressures, that is appropriate to temperatures down to about 600 K began in 1986 [225]. At the present time, models which include around 500 species and more than 2000 reversible reactions to represent alkane isomers up to heptane, are in use [219] and still larger schemes are under development [220]. Progress in the validation and application of these models, and kinetic representations for propane and propene oxidation, are discussed in the next subsection. Modelling of the low-temperature combustion of ethene has also been undertaken more recently [20]. 

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