Team 65

Team Members

Faculty Advisor

Al-Yaman Zoghol
Tyler Dickey

Francesco Carbone

Sponsor

UConn School of Engineering

sponsored by
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Designing and operating an experimental facility to study non-premixed flames of pre-heated (and pre-vaporized) reactants.

This project involves the development of a pre-heating system meant to vaporize liquid fuels and pre-heat reactants past room temperature and pressure to 650 K, for research applications in the FANTastic Laboratory. FANTastic Labs' main research focus is the study of the formation of carbonaceous particulate matter (soot). Currently, UConn’s FANTastic Laboratory lacks the ability to effectively preheat fluid fuel and reactants to the 650 K target. This project aims to enable the lab to conduct research on the relation between soot formation and the pre-heating of pre-vaporized reactants. In the case of easily decomposing fuels (like Isooctane), pre-vaporization must precede significant preheating. This requires a more gentle initial preheating method, in the case of this project, achieved via a system that pre-heats and mixes a nitrogen stream (preheated from 298 K to 700 K) with an aerodynamically atomized liquid iso-octane stream. The mixed stream must then be re-heated to and maintained at a temperature of 650 K, prior to being sent for combustion and subsequent Gas Chromatography analysis. This report project involves the design, component selection, testing, and integration of the pre-heating/pre-mixing system with both a counter-flow and a planar mixing layer burner system.