Flow and chemical kinetics simulations of endothermic fuels

Advanced aircraft engines are reaching a practical heat transfer limit beyond which the convective heat transfer provided by hydrocarbon fuels is no longer adequate. One solution is to use an endothermic fuel that absorbs heat through chemical reactions. This paper describes the development of a two-dimensional computational model of the heat and mass transport associated with a flowing fuel using a unique global chemical kinetics model. Most past models do not account for changes in the chemical composition of a flowing fuel and also do not adequately predict flow properties in the supercritical regime. The two-dimensional computational model presented here calculates the changing flow properties of a supercritical reacting fuel by use of experimentally derived proportional product distributions. The present calculations are validated by measured experimental data obtained from a flow reactor of mildly cracked n-decane. It is believed that these simulations will assist the fundamental understanding of high temperature fuel flow experiments.