Single droplet combustion of aluminum nanoparticles added to a biofuel: effect of particle concentration and ambient temperature

• Autor(a) principal: Ferrão, Inês
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Mendes, Miguel, Moita, A. S., Silva, André
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/12161
• topic: Alternative fuels; Nanofuel; Single droplet combustion; Drop tube furnace

The fast expansion and growth of the aviation sector, coupled with the greenhouse gas andpollutant emissions, requires urgent solutions. A starting point to change this sector paradigmcould be a new energy source for aviation gas turbines, focused on potential carbon neutral fu-els, e.g., biofuels. A possible solution is nanoparticles addition to improve the biofuel propertiesand mitigate the problems inherent to their use. The present work experimentally evaluates thecombustion characteristics of single droplets of HVO (NExBTL) with aluminum nanoparticles.The ambient temperature was varied from600°Cto1000°C. Three particle concentrations (0.2,0.5, and 1.0 wt.%) were investigated with a fixed particle size of 40nm. This study examinedthe combustion of droplets with an initial diameter of 250μmusing a falling droplet method.The results reveal that for nanofuels, the droplet size evolution curve is not in agreement withD2– law and display a unique disruptive burning phenomenon at the end of the droplet life-time. It was noticed that the burning rate of biofuel is considerably enhanced with the addition ofnanoparticles, being the highest value for the nanofuel with a particle concentration of 1.0 wt.%.