Auto-ignition process of stoichiometric mixture of methane-air is investigated using detailed chemical kinetics in a single-zone combustion chamber. Effect of initial temperature on start of combustion (SOC). The Arrhenius expression for the specific reaction rate are calculated and auto-ignition was evaluated based on the species fractions and sensitivity analysis. Our results suggest that the SOC is directly related to initial temperature and the auto-ignition will not occur if the initial temperature low enough.
The prediction of auto-ignition delay times in HCCI engines has risen interest on detailed chemical models. This paper described a validated kinetic mechanism for the oxidation of a model Diesel fuel (n-decane and α-methylnaphthalene). The 3D model for the description of low and high temperature auto-ignition in engines is presented. The behavior of the model fuel is compared with that of n-heptane. Simulations show that the 3D model coupled with the kinetic mechanism can reproduce experimental HCCI and Diesel engine results and that the correct modeling of auto-ignition in the cool flame region is essential in HCCI conditions.
The Minimum Ignition Energy (MIE) of an initially Gaussian temperature profile is found both by Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) and from a new novel model. The model is based on solving the heat diffusion equation in zero dimensions for a Gaussian velocity distribution. The chemistry is taken into account through the ignition delay time, which is required as input to the model. The model results reproduce the DNS results very well for the Hydrogen mixture investigated. Furthermore, the effect of ignition source dimensionality is explored, and it is shown that for compact ignition kernels there is a strong effect on dimensionality. Here, three, two and one dimensional ignition sources represent a spherical kernel, a long spark and an ignition sheet, respectively.
We perform on-the-fly non-adiabatic molecular dynamics simulations using the symmetrical quasi-classical (SQC) approach with the recently suggested molecular Tully models: ethylene and fulvene. We attempt to provide benchmarks of the SQC methods using both the square and the triangle windowing schemes as well as the recently proposed electronic zero-point-energy correction scheme (so-called the gamma correction). We use the quasi-diabatic propagation scheme to directly interface the diabatic SQC methods with adiabatic electronic structure calculations. Our results showcase the drastic improvement of the accuracy by using the trajectory-adjusted gamma-corrections, which outperform the widely used trajectory surface hopping method with decoherence corrections. These calculations provide useful and non-trivial tests to systematically investigate the numerical performance of various diabatic quantum dynamics approaches, going beyond simple diabatic model systems that have been used as the major workhorse in the quantum dynamics field. At the same time, these available benchmark studies will also likely foster the development of new quantum dynamics approaches based on these techniques.
The predictive simulation of molecular liquids requires models that are not only accurate, but computationally efficient enough to handle the large systems and long time scales required for reliable prediction of macroscopic properties. We present a new approach to the systematic approximation of the first-principles potential energy surface (PES) of molecular liquids using the GAP (Gaussian Approximation Potential) framework. The approach allows us to create potentials at several different levels of accuracy in reproducing the true PES, which allows us to test the level of quantum chemistry that is necessary to accurately predict its macroscopic properties. We test the approach by building potentials for liquid methane (CH$_4$), which is difficult to model from first principles because its behavior is dominated by weak dispersion interactions with a significant many-body component. We find that an accurate, consistent prediction of its bulk density across a wide range of temperature and pressure requires not only many-body dispersion, but also quantum nuclear effects to be modeled accurately.
Liquid hydrocarbons are often modeled with fixed, symmetric, atom-centered charge distributions and Lennard-Jones interaction potentials that reproduce many properties of the bulk liquid. While useful for a wide variety of applications, such models cannot capture dielectric effects important in solvation, self-assembly, and reactivity. The dielectric constants of hydrocarbons, such as methane and ethane, physically arise from electronic polarization fluctuations induced by the fluctuating liquid environment. In this work, we present non-polarizable, fixed-charge models of methane and ethane that break the charge symmetry of the molecule to create fixed molecular dipoles, the fluctuations of which reproduce the experimental dielectric constant. These models can be considered a mean-field-like approximation that can be used to include dielectric effects in large-scale molecular simulations of polar and charged molecules in liquid methane and ethane. We further demonstrate that solvation of model ionic solutes and a water molecule in these fixed-dipole models improve upon dipole-free models.