Oxidation of ethanol and hydrocarbon mixtures in a pressurised flow reactor

This paper presents a study of the oxidation of iso-octane, ethanol, toluene and their mixtures in a pressurised turbulent flow reactor operating at 900–930 K, 10 bar, and an equivalence ratio of 0.058. A large set of fuels is investigated, including neat iso-octane, ethanol, toluene, their binary mixtures, gasoline reference fuels (PRF91 and TRF91), and their mixtures with ethanol. The resulting species are measured along the length of the reactor and simulated using existing kinetic models from the literature. The existing models are found to reproduce measurements of the major oxidation products of iso-octane, ethanol, their binary mixtures, as well as that of PRF91 and PRF91/ethanol mixtures. However, significant differences are observed between the measurement and simulation of neat toluene. Adjustment is then made to the rate constants of key reactions in the toluene model. The adjusted model, whilst more accurately reproducing neat toluene oxidation, does not significantly improve the modelling of toluene containing mixtures. This suggests that further investigations should focus on the oxidation of neat toluene, as well as the chemical interactions of toluene containing mixtures.