Document Type

Article

Date

2013

Keywords

Decomposition, Diesel fuel, solid deposits, supercritical, thermal stability

Language

English

Disciplines

Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering

Description/Abstract

A novel concept of clean diesel combustion using supercritical fluids is proposed and being investigated to address some key challenges encountered in the fuel and transportation sector. The core of this concept is to inject diesel fuel (DF) in the supercritical state to achieve clean, high-efficient combustion in diesel engines. Among other challenging issues that must be addressed for the implementation of this new concept is the thermal stability of DF and the potential decomposition and solid deposit formation under engine conditions. In this work, thermal stability of DF was experimentally evaluated under subcritical and supercritical conditions in both static (batch system) and dynamic (continuous flow system) thermal stressing systems. The effects of thermal stressing temperature (200-440 oC) and duration (10-600 min) and CO2 concentration (~10 wt%) were examined. DF decomposition is characterized by the average absolute deviation (AAD) of GC peak area percentages of all individual components. A temperature-time window (400-420 2 oC, 0-60 min) where supercritical DF combustion in diesel engines may be possible was determined. CO2 as a diluent could prevent or reduce accumulation of solid deposits inside fuel pipes mainly due to an increased solubilization capacity of DF. Finally, different structures and morphologies of solid deposits observed under different batch thermal stressing conditions were discussed.

Additional Information

This is a final manuscript of the article which is published in the Journal of Supercritical Fluids

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