Ignition and Combustion of Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass

Novel tailor-made fuels from biomass can provide a significant contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. For the successful development of such biofuels, experimental methods for the investigation of their combustion chemistry are of utmost importance. Reliable experimental data of fundamental combustion properties are the basis for kinetic model validation and thereby the foundation for successful simulations of more complex combustion problems.

This thesis consists of three parts using four different approaches for the experimental investigation of the combustion chemistry of tailor-made fuels from biomass. In the first part of this thesis, a newly developed laminar flow reactor is introduced. In this laminar flow reactor, ignition delay times of up to one second can be measured simultaneously with mole fractions of intermediate species of the ignition process. In the second part of this thesis, a low pressure premixed flat flame study of the novel lignocellulosic biofuel gamma-valerolactone is presented. This is the first oxidation study of gamma-valerolactone. The third part of this thesis addresses the question, how the ignition properties of a group of fuels can be classified rapidly with little fuel demand. Two different experimental approaches - one global, one fundamental - were applied to gain an understanding of the influence of side chains and ring structures on the ignition of entire fuel classes without detailed kinetic modeling of each individual species. The influence of molecular structure on ignition properties is investigated exemplarily for the fuel classes of alkyl furans and alkyl tetrahydrofurans.