ENERXICO researchers have been working on the development of a computational framework to investigate the combustion performance of liquid fuels in internal combustion (IC) engines using a virtual testing tool. The framework is developed in a Python-based scripting environment that requires information of the fuel specification, thermodynamic conditions of the engine, fuel injection rates and baseline reaction mechanism. A fully integrated workflow including chemistry reduction using Path Flux Analysis is used to reduce the size of the kinetic mechanism and generate thermochemical tables that can be used in the context of tabulated chemistry methods such as flamelets. The generation of the flamelet tables will provide the data of the thermochemical structure of the flame as well as the turbulent chemistry interaction, which also assumed a priori. High-fidelity simulations using LES with a Eulerian-Lagrangian description of the multiphase flow is conducted to obtain not only parameters of technological interest like the lift-off length or the ignition delay, but also detailed description of the spray formation, droplet heating and evaporation and combustion dynamics or pollutant formation.  

This framework is used in the ENERXICO project to gain further understanding about the performance of both renewable and power-to-liquid fuels, so-called ‘e-fuels’, at engine-relevant conditions. Our focus is to characterise the sprays to provide reliable information for engine design and optimisation with relevant data as those obtained in experimental test rigs.