Reduction of PAH and soot precursors in benzene flames by addition of ethanol

A one-dimensional premixed flame model (PREMIX) and schemes resulting from the merging of validated kinetic schemes for the oxidation of the components of the present mixtures (benzene and ethanol) were used to investigate the effect of oxygenated additives on aromatic species, which are known to be soot precursors, in fuel-rich benzene combustion. The specific flames were low-pressure (45 mbar), laminar, premixed flames at an equivalence ratio of 2.0. The blended fuels were formed by incrementally adding 4% wt of oxygen (ethanol) to the neat benzene flame and by keeping the inert mole fraction (argon) and the equivalence ratio constants. Special emphasis was directed toward the causes for the concentration-dependent influence of the blends on the amount of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) formed. The effects of oxygenate addition to the benzene base flame were seen to result in interesting differences, especially regarding trends to form PAH. The modeling results indicated that the concentration of acetylene and propargyl radicals, the main PAH precursors, as well as the PAH amounts were lower in the flame of the ethanol-benzene fuel mixture than in the pure benzene flame and that all of the formed PAHs were issued from the phenyl radical. Finally, the modeling results provided evidence that the PAH reduction was a result of simply replacing "sooting" benzene with "nonsooting" ethanol without influencing the combustion chemistry of the benzene.