Experimental and Kinetic Study on Ignition Delay Times of Diethyl Ether

Ignition delay times of Diethyl Ether (DEE) were measured behind reflected shock waves for the temperatures from 1050 to 1600 K, pressures of 1.2, 4 and 16 atm and equivalence ratios of 0.5 and 1.0. Result shows that the ignition delay times increase with the increase of the equivalence ratio and the decrease of the pressure. The only literature DEE mechanism (Yasunaga et al. model) was employed to simulate the experimental data and result shows that the model gives reasonable prediction on lean mixtures, while the prediction on stoichiometric mixtures is slightly higher. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to pick out the key reactions in the process of DEE ignition at high and low pressures, respectively. Reaction pathway analysis shows that the consumption of DEE is dominated by the H-abstraction reactions. Through linear analysis, a correlation for the DEE ignition data was obtained. Using this correlation, the measured DEE data were compared to the literature correlations of DME and n-butane, for they have the similar molecular structure. Result shows that DEE has the strongest overall reactivity among the three fuels, while that of DME and n-butane are comparable. Sensitivity analysis and radical pool analysis were conducted to gain a further understanding of the ignition process of the three fuels.