Experimental and Kinetic Analyses of Thermochemical Fuel Reforming (TFR) with Alcohol Enrichment in Plug Flow Reactor

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In-cylinder thermochemical fuel reforming (TFR) in spark ignition natural gas engine was developed to reveal that thermochemical fuel reforming could increase H2 and CO concentrations in reformed gas, leading to an increase of thermal efficiency and engine performance. Moreover, ethanol enrichment has been proved to have great potential to optimize TFR performance. In order to explain TFR phenomenon chemically, methane oxidation experiments were conducted in a laminar flow reactor with addition of ethanol and methanol at equivalent ratios of 1.5, 1.7, 1.9 and 2.1 from 948K to 1098K at atmospheric pressure. Experimental results showed that methanol have great ability to facilitate the oxidation of methane than that of ethanol. Meanwhile, the degree of methane conversion became more significantly as the equivalent ratio increased. Kinetic analysis of oxidation of methane with alcohol enrichment in a plug flow model was also conducted in this study. There was good agreement between experimental and computational results. The oxidation of methanol or ethanol released plenty of radicals such as H, OH and HO2, which further reacted with CH4 more intensively in fuel rich condition. Rate of production and sensitivity analyses showed that methanol could produce more reactive radicals, which were involved in a series of initial oxidation reactions of methane. It indicated that methanol have great potential to improve in-cylinder TFR performance.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1 Introduction 1
• 1.1 Background Information 1
• 1.1.1 Industrial Methane Reforming 2
• 1.1.2 Steam reforming 4
• 1.1.3 Dry Reforming 4
• 2 Experimental Setup 5
• 3 Experimental and Modelling Results 7
• 3.1 Flow Reactor Experiment 7
• 3.2 Mechanisms and optimization 8
• 4 Kinetic Analyses 12
• 4.1 Active radicals: H, OH and HO2 12
• 4.2 Rate of Production Analyses 14
• 4.3 Reaction Paths 16
• 5 Conclusions 18
• 6 References 20