Experimental Study of the High-Temperature Autoignition of Tetralin

Abstract

The autoignition of tetralin, a naphthenic and aromatic hydrocarbon found in jet and diesel fuels and a hydrogen donor with potential as an endothermic fuel and for use in heavy crude oil upgrading processes, has been studied in shock-tube experiments. Measurements of ignition delay times for tetralin/air mixtures at equivalence ratios of 0.5 and 1.0 were made in stationary reflected shock-heated gases at nominal pressures around 13 and 37–39 bar and temperatures from 978 to 1277 K, conditions relevant to practical combustion devices, such as internal combustion engines and jet engine gas turbine combustors. The dependence of the ignition delay time upon the temperature, equivalence ratio, and pressure in the examined condition space can be described with a simple four-parameter correlation. Measurements compared the recent kinetic model by Dagaut et al. (Dagaut, P.; Ristori, A.; Frassoldati, A.; Raravelli, T.; Dayma, G.; Ranzi, E. Energy Fuels 2013, 27, 1576−1585) to good a priori agreement between the model and experiment. Comparisons between the present autoignition measurements for tetralin and previous results for decalin, toluene, and cyclohexane illustrate the relative reactivity for compounds containing aromatic, naphthenic, and combined structures.