Detailed Chemical Kinetic Modeling of Surrogate Fuels for Gasoline and Application to an HCCI Engine

Gasoline consists of many different classes of hydrocarbons, such as paraffins, olefins, aromatics, and cycloalkanes. In this study, a surrogate gasoline reaction mechanism is developed, and it has one representative fuel constituent from each of these classes. These selected constituents are iso-octane, n-heptane, 1-pentene, toluene, and methyl-cyclohexane. The mechanism was developed in a step-wise fashion, adding submechanisms to treat each fuel component. Reactions important for low temperature oxidation (<1000K) and cross-reactions among different fuels are incorporated into the mechanism. The mechanism consists of 1328 species and 5835 reactions. A single-zone engine model is used to evaluate how well the mechanism captures autoignition behavior for conditions corresponding to homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) engine operation. Experimental data are available for both how the combustion phasing changes with fueling at a constant intake temperature, and also how the intake temperature has to be changed with pressure in order to maintain combustion phasing for a fixed equivalence ratio. Three different surrogate fuel mixtures are used for the modeling. Predictions are in reasonably good agreement with the engine data. In addition, the heat release rate is calculated and compared to the data from experiments. The model predicts less low-temperature heat release than that measured. It is found that the low temperature heat-release rate depends strongly on engine speed, reactions of RO₂+HO₂, fuel composition, and pressure boost.