GALCIT Home Page
| 2000-2001 Fluids Seminar Page |
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Delaware
Abstract-
A basic understanding of combustion kinetics is largely motivated
by the need to predict the extinction, ignition, and steady burning
behaviors in supersonic combustion and the rate of pollutant formation from
fossil-fuel combustion. Even in laminar premixed flames, the kinetic
processes are extremely complex. A large number of intermediate species are
produced,
some of which are molecules, while others are free radicals. The time from
the onset of reaction to the formation of intermediates and final combustion
products is extremely short, typically on the order of 10 milliseconds or
less. The matter is further complicated by the coupling of fluid transport,
chemical reactions, and heat release. For this reason the advance in our
understanding of combustion kinetics can be made only if the problem is
further isolated into several smaller problems. In this talk I shall
discuss three such problems: (a) chain initiation reactions in the ignition
of unsaturated hydrocarbons, (b) the molecular diffusion of free-radical
species, and (c) systematic development of a detailed kinetic model of
hydrocarbon combustion. A number of theoretical tools will be discussed
also, including ab initio quantum chemical calculations, the
Rice-Ramsperger-Kassel-Marcus (RRKM) theory, and molecular dynamics.
|
GALCIT Home Page
|
|