This overview compiles the on-going research in Europe to enlarge and deepen the understanding of the reaction mechanisms and pathways associated with the combustion of an increased range of fuels. Focus is given to the formation of a large number of hazardous minor pollutants and the inability of current combustion models to predict the formation of minor products such as alkenes, dienes, aromatics, aldehydes and soot nano-particles which have a deleterious impact on both the environment and on human health. Cleaner Combustion describes, at a fundamental level, the reactive chemistry of minor pollutants within extensively validated detailed mechanisms for traditional fuels, but also innovative surrogates, describing the complex chemistry of new environmentally important bio-fuels. Divided into five sections, a broad yet detailed coverage of related research is provided. Beginning with the development of detailed kinetic mechanisms, chapters go on to explore techniques to obtain reliable experimental data, soot and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, mechanism reduction and uncertainty analysis, and elementary reactions. This comprehensive coverage of current research provides a solid foundation for researchers, managers, policy makers and industry operators working in or developing this innovative and globally relevant field.

Rapid Compression Machines (RCMs) typically incorporate creviced pistons to suppress the formation of the roll-up vortex. The use of a creviced piston, however, can enhance other multi-dimensional effects inside the RCM due to the crevice zone being at a lower temperature than the main reaction chamber. In this work, such undesirable effects of the creviced piston are first highlighted through computational fluid dynamics simulations of n-heptane ignition in an RCM. Specifically, the results show that in an RCM with a creviced piston, additional mass flow takes place from the main combustion chamber to the crevice zone during the first-stage ignition. This phenomenon is not captured by the conventional zero-dimensional modeling approaches. Consequently, a novel approach of 'crevice containment' is introduced and evaluated. According to this approach, in order to avoid the undesirable effects of the creviced piston, the crevice zone is separated from the main reaction chamber at the end of compression. The computational results with this novel approach show significant improvement in the fidelity of the zero-dimensional modeling in terms of predicting the overall ignition delay and pressure rise in the first-stage ignition. In addition, this approach also offers other advantages, namely a reduction in the rate of post-compression pressure drop and improved data during species sampling experiments. An RCM is subsequently designed and successfully fabricated with the feature of 'crevice containment' for the purpose of chemical kinetics studies at elevated pressures and temperatures. Characterization experiments for the newly built RCM show that the operation of the RCM is free from any vibrations, allows fast compression (22 ms), compressed pressures up to 100 bar and the experimental data obtained is highly reproducible. Using this facility, autoignition investigations are conducted for Hydrogen at a pressure of 50 bar. The experiments are modeled using the kinetic mechanism of O'Conaire et al. (2004). Results showed that the mechanism of O'Conaire et al. agree very well with the experimental data.

The apparatus opens new possibilities for studying the detonation characteristics of fuels. Also, the tests can be conducted on a few millimeters of fuel.