Growing acceptance of the detrimental environmental effects of fossil fuel usage for transport and power generation has added increasing urgency to the search for truly sustainable alternative fuels. This presents an opportunity to develop future fuels that are not just like for like replacements for current fossil fuels, but are actually improved fuels that release energy in a more efficient way and emit fewer harmful pollutants. This lecture will explain how the molecular structure of alternative fuels influences IC engine combustion phasing and the exhaust emissions of harmful and globally regulated pollutants, such as NOx and soot. The results of experimental studies carried out on a modern diesel engine equipped with a novel low volume fuel system will also be presented, and which highlight how features of hydrocarbon molecular structure, including alkyl chain length and degree of saturation, double bond position and isomerization, alkylbenzene methyl branching and oxygenated functional groups, impact on combustion and emissions characteristics, including the formation of highly toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). The lecture will also demonstrate how this knowledge can be used in practice to develop new fuels from novels sources (for example genetically engineered micro-algae) that are designed for both sustainable production and cleaner release of energy during combustion.

 

Dr Paul Hellier, a Lecturer and EPSRC Research Fellow at the Department of Mechanical Engineering University College London, is an experimental researcher in the inter-disciplinary development of sustainable future fuels for diesel and spark ignition engines. Following a degree in Environmental Engineering at Cardiff University, Dr Hellier undertook his PhD at UCL Mechanical Engineering in collaboration with BP Global Fuels, investigating the impacts of fuel molecular structure on combustion efficiency and pollutant emission in compression ignition engines. He has worked with academic researchers from many disciplines, notably UCL’s Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology in the development of liquid fuels from micro-algae, and leads the UCL contribution to the £3M EPSRC multi-institution project “Ultra Efficient Engines and Fuels”. Dr Hellier has published around 30 articles in leading fuel and combustion journal; his article “The influence of biodiesel composition on compression ignition combustion and emissions” was awarded the 2015 Harold V. Disney Prize by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) and he was awarded the “Outstanding Presentation Award for Young Researchers and Engineers" at the 2011 JSAE/SAE International Powertrains, Fuels & Lubricants Meeting, Kyoto, Japan.