Ansys Model Fuel Library
The Model Fuel Library (MFL) includes detailed and validated reaction mechanisms for over 65 fuel components that are relevant to combustion simulations in a wide variety of industrial and commercial applications. The fuel components can be used to represent gaseous or liquid fuel combustion for petroleum-derived or alternative fuels. Gaseous components include natural gas, synthetic gas, biofuels and blends. For liquid fuels, the fuel components can be used in formulating surrogates for a wide range of real-world fuels, including gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, alternative fuels, fuel blends and additives.
Overview
Today’s engine and combustor designers are striving to attain low emissions and high efficiency more rapidly and at a lower cost than ever before. Combustion modeling can generate substantial savings in engine development cost and improved product quality, but challenges in achieving these benefits often arise due to inaccuracies in the fuel model. Engine designers have traditionally used severely reduced fuel models in combustion simulations. These models can require complicated tuning or adjustment in order to provide predictive results. Alternatively, advanced combustion simulation tools like Ansys Forte and Ansys Chemkin-Pro can take advantage of larger and more accurate fuel models and still provide fast time-to-solution. The Model Fuel Library provides a set of accurate real-fuel models that are easy to use in modern tools.
Features
Developed by Model Fuels Consortium
The Model Fuel Library is based on both the outcome of the industry-driven Model Fuels Consortium (2006-2012) project and the ongoing Model Fuel Library Subscription Service that maintains the library to keep it up to date with the state of current combustion science.
Over 60 Master Fuel Components Included
MFL includes well validated models for over 60 master fuel components that can be used to create accurate simulations for combustion of such common fuels as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, FT fuels, natural or synthetic gas, biofuels and additives. Such fuels may be represented by “surrogate fuels” that are a combination of multiple MFL fuel components. The fuel components fall into chemical classes such as n-alkanes, iso-alkanes, 1-ring aromatics, 2-ring aromatics, cycloalkanes/naphthenes, olefins, oxygenated fuels and additives. In addition, the fuel mechanisms include soot precursors and emissions pathways.
Mechanism reduction with Chemkin-Pro Reaction Workbench
Putting mechanisms in the library is easy with Chemkin-Pro Reaction Workbench. Within Reaction Workbench, the Surrogate Blend Optimizer automatically determines the optimal surrogate blend to match real multicomponent fuel physical properties.
Reaction Workbench then automatically reduces mechanism size using a combination of reduction techniques.
- The user specifies target parameters and acceptable error tolerances
- Reaction Workbench automatically generates the smallest skeletal mechanism satisfying these specifications
Use with Ansys Simulation Software
The Model Fuel Library offering is encrypted for use with Ansys software, including Ansys Chemkin-Pro, Reaction Workbench, Energico, Ansys Forte and Ansys Fluent. With the Model Fuel Library, it is possible to model most real fuels by either exactly representing the chemical properties of the fuel or by formulating an appropriate surrogate. We recommend using Ansys Chemkin-Pro/Reaction Workbench to formulate surrogates for liquid fuels, and also for reducing the master reaction mechanism to provide smaller mechanisms that can be tailored for a particular application (e.g., for use in computational fluid dynamics engine simulation).
