Chemical kinetic modeling of biodiesel combustion

Chemical kinetic mechanisms are an important tool used by engine designers to better understand the fundamental combustion properties of biodiesel. Recent developments into the modeling of simple and well characterized surrogates have led to a better understanding of the ester function during combustion, but these small molecules do not well represent the important combustion characteristics of real biodiesel. Therefore, the research focus has shifted to using larger fatty acid alkyl esters and/or long chain hydrocarbons as surrogate fuels. While these compounds provide a better representation of real biodiesel combustion, the chemical kinetic mechanisms are computationally unwieldy due to their large size. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 8th World Congress of Chemical Engineering (Montreal, Quebec, Canada 8/23-27/2009).