Experimental study of the kinetics of ethanol pyrolysis and oxidation behind reflected shock waves and in laminar flames

The pyrolysis and oxidation of ethanol mixtures at high temperature is studied in a shock tube in the 1047–2518 K range at initial pressures of 1.06 and 2.07 bar. Pyrolysis and oxidation intermediates were investigated with high-repetition-rate time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS). Ignition delay times were determined from chemiluminescence measurements and the OH concentration was determined with high time resolution from ring dye laser absorption measurements. Laminar flame speeds of ethanol in air were measured in a spherical bomb for initial temperatures between 318 and 473 K at 1, 2, and 5 bar and for equivalence ratios from 0.7 to 1.5. The measurements were compared to simulations based on various mechanisms from the literature. This comparison showed that the mechanism developed by Ranzi et al. (2012) provides the best agreement with the measured data for ethanol oxidation at high temperature. 2014 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Combustion Institute.