Detailed Chemical Mechanism Generation for Combustion of Ethanol-Air Mixture
Abstract Significance of ethanol as an alternative source of renewable energy is increasing every day. In this study a chemical mechanism has been developed to predict the characteristic of ethanol oxidation in a wide range of temperature and pressure of 300–2500 K and 1–50 atm, respectively. The mechanism is generated using reaction mechanism generator (RMG). Sensitivity analysis on the mechanism is done to find the reactions responsible in the deviation of numerical results with experimental data. Rate coefficient of important reactions is corrected with well-accepted data from literature which helps to improve the mechanism against experiment. The validation is done with laminar burning speed and ignition delay time results at various operating conditions. The results show a reasonable agreement in both high pressure and low temperature cases. A good prediction of major species concentration is found in flame structure measurement. A comparison of the current mechanism with other available chemical mechanisms is also presented at different operating conditions. Compared to other mechanisms, this improved mechanism has an advantage of handling the high pressure and low temperature operating conditions within a reasonable time and accuracy.