A Joint Experiment/Computational Study of Endothermic Chemistry In Aviation Fuels

High performance military aircraft operating in the hypersonic regime produce large heat loads that can only be managed with endothermic fuels. However, the current knowledge of endothermic chemistry in fuels and its effects over a range of aircraft flight conditions is extremely limited. The proposed Phase I study is aimed at the development of advanced finite rate models to characterize dehydrogenation (endothermic) reactions that occur on the catalyst surface. Data generated at Pratt & Whitney on an experimental prototype system will be used to develop, calibrate and validate endothermic chemistry model. The chemistry model will be incorporated into an advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code to facilitate the coupled analysis of fluid flow, heat/mass transfer and chemical reactions in fuel lines. The coupled model will be used to perform detailed parametric studies to evaluate the performance of the cooling system over a range of operating conditions. The parameters that will be studied in Phase I are the fuel flow rate, the heat load on the fuel, the operating temperature and the fuel/catalyst combination. In Phase II, the model will be extended to include the effects of multi-component supercritical states and thermal pyrolysis of the fuel.