Development and validation of a reduced chemical kinetic model for used vegetable oil biodiesel/1-Hexanol blend for engine application

Abstract

In this study, a compact kinetic model consisting of 588 reactions and 139 species is proposed for 1-Hexanol and used vegetable oil (UVO) biodiesel blend for simulating internal combustion (IC) engines. Suitable modifications were made to the pre-exponential factor to ascertain predictive performance comparable to the investigational results. This reduced reaction model was validated with experimental data from the published work for laminar flames speed, ignition delay and species mole fractions. The reduced mechanism and the experimental results are comparable within a factor of 1.3–2.5. A zero-dimensional single zone model was employed for simulating internal combustion engine conditions with the reduced mechanism using Cantera software and the results are analogous and as expected from the simulation study. The reduced reaction mechanism could be utilized by the researchers working on alternative fuels to simulate and study the combustion of used vegetable oil/1-Hexanol blend in an engine using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling software.