Abstract: A method based on quasi-steady state approximation (QSSA) isused to construct a reduced chemical kinetic model for the ignitionand combustion of Hydro-carbon fuel, and a software package named SPARCK(Software Package for Reduction of Chemical Kinetics) is developed.Firstly, this method and software is applied to reduce the detailedelementary chemical kinetic model GRI2.11 for the combustion of methane,and a reduced global reaction kinetic model containing 14 species and 10 globalreactions is obtained. Secondly, when this method and software is applied tothe detailed elementary chemical kinetic model of ethylene combustion whichcontaining 51 species and 365 elementary reactions, a reduced globalreaction kinetic model involving 20 species and 16 global reactions canbe obtained. Finally, for the combustion of heptane, a reduced global reactionkinetic model involving 26 species and 22 global reactions is obtained from adetailed mechanism having 160 species and 1540 elementary reactions by thismethod. After using these reduced kinetic models to numerically simulate thetypical fuel ignition process in the shock tube, it can be seen that thesereduced models can represent the ignition mechanism of the detailed kineticmodels quite well and with good accuracies.