Oak Ridge National Laboratory Joins Model Fuels Consortium
SAN DIEGO--Reaction Design, the clean technology chemistry leader, today announced that the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has joined the Model Fuels Consortium (MFC). Through its membership in the MFC, ORNL will bring its extensive experimental facilities, data, and experience to the consortium’s charter to develop, validate and apply advanced simulation methods that can improve engine and fuel design resulting in increased fuel efficiencies and reduced emissions. Oak Ridge National Laboratory joins existing members General Motors, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, Cummins Engine Company, Dow Chemical Company, Ford Motor Company, Honda, L'Institut Français du Pétrole, Mazda, Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Toyota.
“The ORNL participation provides critical validation of the model-fuels methodology through measurements and comparisons in real engines,” said Dr. Ellen Meeks, VP of Development of Reaction Design. “Combined with validation against more fundamental combustion data and the laboratory engine data being provided by the L'Institut Français du Pétrole, we are confident that our program for model development and reduction will result in industry adoption of simulation as a viable way to reduce development costs and accelerate innovation.”
Launched in 2005, Reaction Design’s MFC directs the expertise and resources of fuel producers, engine manufacturers and automakers toward a shared agenda: to develop the model fuels that are essential to accurate simulation of the complex chemical processes that drive combustion. The MFC’s stakeholders face regulatory and economic pressures to meet increasingly stringent emissions standards and demanding fuel efficiency requirements – circumstances that have also given rise to developmental fuels and new engine technologies they must master.
“We are particularly excited about being a part of the MFC because it provides another useful avenue for the extensive data we have developed on engine technology,” said Dr. Bruce Bunting, scientist at ORNL. “Reaction Design has created an effective Industry consortium with both engine manufacturers and fuel designers with technical guidance from world leaders and organizations such as ORNL that will help industry develop cleaner, multi-fuel capable engines.
To manage the ever-expanding range of design options and their inherent tradeoffs, engine and fuel developers have boosted their reliance on combustion simulation, thereby reducing their dependence on costly and increasingly inadequate empirical tests. Through the MFC’s work, simulation will continue to grow in value and reliability as a design tool.
Model fuels are carefully chosen mixtures of a few pure chemicals that together mimic the combustion behavior in computer simulations of the much more chemically complex commercial fuels. Once validated, the model fuels accurately simulate combustion, allowing fuel and engine designers to optimize engine performance and emissions control faster and at less cost than with traditional physical fuel/engine testing. Developing validated fuel surrogates and associated computer simulation tools are the main focus of the consortium.
About Reaction Design
Reaction Design helps transportation manufacturers and energy companies rapidly achieve their Clean Technology goals by automating the analysis of chemical processes via simulation and modeling solutions. Reaction Design is the exclusive developer and distributor of CHEMKIN, the de facto standard for modeling gas-phase and surface chemistry that provides engineers ultra-fast access to reliable answers that save time and money in the development process. Reaction Design also offers the KINetics software package, which brings detailed kinetics modeling to other engineering applications, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) programs. Reaction Design’s world-class engineers, chemists and programmers have expertise that spans multi-scale engineering from the molecule to the plant. Reaction Design serves more than 350 customers in the commercial, government and academic markets.
Reaction Design can be found online at www.reactiondesign.com.
CHEMKIN® and Reaction Design® are registered trademarks of Reaction Design. KINetics and Model Fuels Consortium are trademarks of Reaction Design.