Kinetics and Product Distributions for Thermal Cracking of a Kerosene-Based Aviation Fuel

Thermal cracking reactions of a kerosene-based aviation fuel were carried out in a constant-volume reactor, and the kinetics were investigated at different temperatures from 663 to 703 K. The gaseous and liquid products collected from the efflux cooled to room temperature at atmospheric pressure were determined by gas chromatography and gas chromatography−mass spectrometry. The major hydrocarbon components in the gaseous phase were methane, ethane, ethene, propane, and propene; methane had the highest content among them. In the liquid effluence, the contents of components with carbon atom number higher than C11 decreased while those with lower carbon atom number clearly increased with the temperature or reaction time increasing. The gas yield ratios increased with the reaction temperature or time increasing. The thermal cracking kinetic process was correlated well by the pseudo first-order kinetic equation. The correlation followed that the rate constants were in the range 0.163 × 10−2 h−1 at 663 K to 2.8...