Fuel Additives For Reduced Engine Emissions

"Reaction Engineering International (REI) has assembled a team to develop fuel additives for reducing particulate emissions from gas-turbine engines. The primary focus is on military engines fueled by JP8 and JP5 but the additives would also be applicableto the commercial fleet of aircraft. The additives will have multiple functions: 1) to delay ignition thus providing greater premixing prior to combustion, 2) to suppress soot precursor formation, and 3) to enhance soot burnout kinetics. In Phase I,additives capable of providing these separate functions will be nominated by consultants to REI, Drs E.M.Eyring and B. Dunn of the University of Utah and Dan Dailey and David Forester of Lubrizol. These additives will be screened experimentally in alaboratory droplet-stream combustor at the University of Utah, and theoretically using well-stirred/plug-flow reactor networks of gas turbine engines including detailed chemical models of soot formation. A multi-functional additive combining thecharacteristics of the best of each class of additives, and satisfying the constraints imposed by cost and performance, will be nominated for synthesis and critical evaluation in Phase II of the program, including testing on a T-63 engine at WrightPatterson and CFD modeling of realistic engine configurations using a reduced chemical mechanism. The anticipated benefits of the proposed program include: 1) the development of low cost fuel additives for r