Correlations of Soot Formation in Turbojet Engines and in Laboratory Flames

Abstract

Smoke related performance of both jet engine and research combustors has been correlated with several fuel properties. The smoke related data included: smoke number, liner temperature rise, and radiation flux to the combustor wall; fuel parameters included: percent hydrogen, percent aromatic, percent polycyclic aromatic, smoke point, and the threshold soot index, TSI. The research combustor results correlated best with the threshold sooting index. While some correlations with engine performance were excellent, no single fuel property was generally useful in evaluating smoke related performance, mainly because of insufficient data on the fuels tested in the jet engine programs, e.g., percent aromatics specifies a class of fuels which span > 50% of the possible range of sooting tendencies. It is, however, demonstrated that fuel composition plays a dominant role in determining smoke related engine parameters. It is recommended that fuels used for engine testing programs be chemically analyzed in greater detail or be made available for laboratory measurements of soot thresholds and soot yields until a sufficient data base is available to establish a laboratory technique of predicting relative smoke related performance of fuels in jet engines.