COMPUTATIONAL FLUID-DYNAMICS SIMULATIONS OF JET FUEL OXIDATION INCORPORATING PSEUDO-DETAILED CHEMICAL-KINETICS

Military jet aircraft circulate fuel as a cooling medium. Upon heating , dissolved oxygen reacts with the fuel forming insoluble deposits whi ch can block fuel lines and disrupt operation of close tolerance valve s. Thus, an understanding of how dissolved oxygen reacts with the fuel is important to aircraft designers. A pseudo-detailed kinetics model which considers antioxidant chemistry was incorporated in a computatio nal fluid dynamics code, and dissolved oxygen and hydroperoxide concen tration profiles along a stainless steel tube were calculated for both nearly isothermal and nonisothermal flowing systems. Flowing experime nts were performed with both a severely hydrotreated fuel and a straig ht-run fuel, and the predicted dissolved oxygen and hydroperoxide prof iles agreed reasonably well with the measured profiles over a range of bulk fuel temperatures and flow conditions. The present model offers an improved understanding of jet fuel oxidation and antioxidant chemis try.