Cleaner Combustion Developing Detailed Chemical Kinetic Models Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the general context of this book and to present the five parts which compose it. The development of detailed chemical kinetic models for cleaner combustion is driven by the need to mitigate current environmental issues such as climate change and the potential impacts of gaseous and particulate pollutants on human health, particularly within highly populated urban regions. The first part presents the methods currently used to develop detailed kinetic models for combustion, especially in the case of fuels produced from biomass sources. The second part describes the experimental methods currently used to obtain reliable data in order to test the validity of models for the combustion of fossil and biofuels with a particular focus on the latter. The third part details the experiments and models more especially concerned with the formation of polyaromatic compounds and soot particles. The fourth part concerns the methods proposed for uncertainty analysis and model reduction and, finally, the fifth part describes the experimental and theoretical determination of thermochemical parameters and rate coefficients for the species and reactions included in the proposed models. This book is aimed at readers at an intermediate level between graduate students and junior scientists.