CLEAN COMBUSTION RESEARCH CENTER

KAUST FUTURE FUELS WORKSHOPMarch 7-9, 2016

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES & ABSTRACTS

Discovery Through Collaboration

"In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

Based on Islam’s eternal values, which urge us to seek knowledge and develop ourselves and our societies, and relying on God Almighty, we declare the establishment of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and hope it will be a source of knowledge and serve as a bridge between people and cultures.

We also hope that it delivers its humane and noble message in an ideal environment, with the help of God and the minds and the ideas of enlightened people, who will participate in this educational mission without discrimination.

In keeping with the traditions of the golden age of Arab Muslim civilization, we have established an endowment, from which we only wish God’s blessings, so that this institution may benefit the citizens of this beloved country, which is the cradle of Islam, and benefit all man kind.

I pray to God to make this University a “House of Wisdom,” a forum for science and research, and a beacon of knowledge for future generations.

God bless you all."

The Custodian of the Two Holy MosquesKing Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

A King’s Vision

IntroductionDear Friends and Colleagues,

A very warm welcome to the KAUST Future Fuels Workshop 2016 and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology!

The KAUST Future Fuels Workshop is organized by the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC) and brings together leading experts from academia, national laboratories, and industry to share their vision for the energy sector and present their most recent results in the areas of fuel sustainability, production, utilization, chemistry and the use of low-grade fuels. The Workshop aims to promote international collaborations in establishing research and development direction for diverse fuel formulation and utilization towards clean and efficient energy systems. The 2016 Workshop is centered on Theme B (Future Fuels) as part of the core CCRC research activities sponsored by the KAUST Center Competitive Fund (CCF). The technical scope of the workshop is encompassing a wide spectrum of cutting edge technologies on production, utilization, and global sustainability issues on next generation energy, with an emphasis on low-grade and alternative fuels for transportation and stationary power sectors. Following the success in 2014 and 2015, the Workshop will continue the role of KAUST/CCRC in building a global consortium on future energy research and technology.

The Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC) has progressed tremendously since its inauguration in Feb 2014. We now have over 100 members including nine faculty, eight research scientists, thirty post-doctoral fellows, and fifty PhD students. We have state-of-the-art combustion laboratories spread over two buildings. During the course of the Workshop, you will have the opportunity to visit the CCRC labs and will hopefully see numerous collaboration opportunities in experimental and modeling work.

With our best wishes for a most enjoyable and rewarding time at KAUST,

Workshop Co-Chairs:Aamir FarooqHong ImWilliam Roberts

Prof. Yves Gnanou, dean of Physical Science and Engineering Division, joins KAUST from École Polytechnique in Paris, where he held the title of vice president of academic affairs and of research.

Previously, he held the position of professor and director of Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères Organiques at Bordeaux University, France, from 1999 to 2007. During his tenure in Bordeaux, he was also an adjunct professor at the University of Florida from 2002 to 2007 and a visiting professor at MIT from 1989 to 1990.

Prof. Gnanou received his PhD in polymer chemistry in 1985 from the Université L. Pasteur, Strasbourg. Currently, his research focuses on the design of metal-free green catalysis for chain and step-growth polymerizations and on the assembly of original polymeric architectures based in particular on CO2 by novel synthetic methods. Prof. Gnanou’s publications record consists of more than 300 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters and patents in the field of polymer chemistry. He is the co-author of two internationally used textbooks for undergraduate and graduate students. Prof. Gnanou is a member of the advisory boards of Polymer, e-Polymers, and Designed Monomers and Polymers. In 2003, he received the Langevin Prize and the Berthelot Medal from the French Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 he was elected as a member of the French Academy of Agriculture.

Yves Gnanou

Dr. Roberts is the Center Director of the Clean Combustion Research Center and Professor of Mechanical Engineering here at KAUST. His research interests include experimental combustion, propulsion, and laser-based optical diagnostics for reacting flows. Of fundamental interest is the complex interaction between the various length and velocity scales in turbulent flows and the chemical kinetics associated with combustion. His focus is on understanding these interactions in canonical flames, using advanced techniques to measure scalar and vector quantities of interest. He is currently establishing a unique high-pressure combustion capability at KAUST which will be used to understand combustion phenomena, particularly formation of pollutants such as soot, occurring in practical combustion hardware such as gas turbines and internal combustion engines. Other projects include measurement of unstretched laminar burning velocity of gasolines and it surrogates, measuring soot morphology at high pressures, developing novel propulsion devices for high efficiency or specific impulse, and cenosphere formation from combustion of heavy fuel oils.

Dr. Roberts received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992. Prior to this, he worked in the Strategic Defense Initiative Office for two years and worked at NASA Langley on SCRAMJET concepts after defending his dissertation. He joined NC State University in 1994, where he rose through the academic ranks until leaving for KAUST in 2012.

William L. Roberts

Mr Ahmad O. Al Khowaiter is Saudi Aramco’s Chief Technology Officer. Al Khowaiter joined Saudi Aramco in 1983, where he held various technical roles in oil and gas production organizations, ranging from design, project management, commissioning, and operations; as well as a number of supervisory, managerial, and general management positions.

He held the position of Saudi Aramco Chief Engineer from 2011 to 2014, and Executive Director of Power Systems in 2014 before assuming his present role.

Al Khowaiter holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM), an M.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and an MBA degree as a Sloan Fellow from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ahmad O. Al Khowaiter

Mark Crowell is Vice President for Innovation and Economic Development at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. His prior professional roles include serving as founding Executive Director of UVa Innovation at the University of Virginia; Vice President for Business Development at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and Palm Beach; Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology Transfer and Economic Development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Associate Vice Chancellor for Technology Transfer and Industry Research at NC State University; and Director of Technology Transfer at Duke University.

Mark was 2005 President of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), served for five years as Chair of BIO's Technology Transfer Committee, and is a member of numerous regional, national and international boards, committees and organizations (including APEC’s Life Sciences Innovation Forum). He consults nationally and worldwide in matters related to innovation-based economic development strategy and policy, translational research partnerships, university-industry research collaborations, and academic technology transfer; his clients include the World Bank, BIO, the Arkansas Research Alliance, Eva Klein and Associates, and a number of universities and NGOs.

Mark currently serves as a member of the Innovation Council appointed by University of California System President Janet Napolitano. In 2013, he received the Bayh-Dole Award from AUTM “in recognition of his lifetime contributions to advancing academic innovations.” In April 2014, the US Chamber of Commerce named UVa Innovation as its 2014 “Champion of Intellectual Property.” He has written and presented lectures throughout the world on the subject of best practices in the management of academic innovation and university-industry alliances, including providing testimony on two occasions on these subjects to the U.S. Congress. In 2011, Mark was invited by the White House to attend President Barack Obama’s signing ceremony for the “America Invents Act” in recognition of his university work and national and international thought leadership on the university’s role in facilitating innovation-based economic development.

Mark Crowell

SpeakerBiographies& Abstracts

Dr. Patzek is the Center Director of the Upstream Petroleum Engineering Research Center and also Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at KAUST. His research interests are in Mathematical (analytic and numerical) modeling of earth systems with emphasis on multiphase fluid flow physics and rock mechanics; smart, process-based control of very large waterfloods in unconventional, low-permeability formations; productivity and mechanics of hydrocarbon bearing shales.

Dr. Patzek has co-designed and evaluated 7 field pilots of various oil recovery processes from waterflood, to steam and steam foam injection. More recently, Dr. Patzek got involved in human-machine interactions and safety culture in the offshore environment.

In a broader context, Dr. Patzek works on the thermodynamics and ecology of human survival and energy supply schemes for humanity. He has participated in the global debate on energy supply schemes by giving hundreds of press interviews and appearing on the BBC, PBS, CBS, CNBC, ABC, NPR, etc., and giving invited lectures around the world.

Tadeusz Wilktor Patzek

Fundamental Unsustainability of Current and Future Fuel SystemsTadeusz Wiktor PatzekKAUST, Saudi Arabia

In my talk, I will give a thermodynamic definition of sustainability and demonstrate why all major fuel systems are fundamentally unsustainable on the planet Earth, according to this definition. These fuel systems do differ however in the degree to which they are unsustainable and in their environmental impacts. I will illustrate my conclusions with examples of several fuel systems. I will provide arguments as to why we need to change the current delusional narrative and be more realistic about what can and cannot be done when the omnipresent Second Law of thermodynamics intervenes. I will illustrate the importance of oil and gas as blood powering every part of the modern society. I will show why biofuel systems are damaging to the planet’s most important ecosystems and to humanity.

Dr. Amer has been active in the engines and fuels area for over twenty years including engine research, implementation of new engine technology in vehicles and research leadership - he is currently the Fuels Chief Technologist at Saudi Aramco’s R&D Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has been instrumental in the rapid expansion of Saudi Aramco’s fuels research in Dhahran and in two new satellite centers in Paris and Detroit as well as in establishing collaborative research projects with universities and Automakers. He is currently leading a global team responsible for executing projects of great strategic significance to the auto and oil industries developing efficient, clean and affordable fuel/engine systems using less processed fuels. He joined the Saudi Aramco R&DC in 2007 after more than 12 years with the US Automotive Industry (Chrysler) where he was involved in various design and development activities of many engine programs including the Chrysler 5.7L V8 Hemi and the Chrysler Pentastar V6 engine family. Dr. Amer co-authored more than 35 papers in the fields of engine experimentation, diagnostics and simulation and organized and chaired many Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) technical sessions. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 1995 and an MBA in 2002.

Amer Amer

Unlocking the Potential of Fuel to Enable Sustainable MobilityAmer AmerSaudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia

Currently almost all (> 99.9%) of mobility is powered by combustion engines. Around 95% of global transport energy is provided by petroleum-based liquid fuels and ~60% of all petroleum goes to make transport fuels. Transport accounts for ~23% of global CO2 emissions but only ~14% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions if other GHG gases like methane are accounted for. Most projections suggest that even by 2040, around 90% of all transport energy will still come from petroleum based fuels. This is because alternatives start from a low base and also have constraints on growth. There will be enough oil supply to meet the demand over this time scale. The global demand for transport energy, driven by growth in non-OECD countries, is expected to increase by around 40% up to 2040. However this growth is expected to be heavily skewed towards demand from the commercial (heavy duty vehicles, aviation and marine) rather than the personal transport sector. This is because the average car in 2040 will be smaller, lighter and travel less distance driving significant gasoline fuel savings. There is also far greater scope for electrification in the light-duty sector, which will actually lead to greater demand imbalance between middle distillates and gasoline. In addition there are pressures to increase the octane of the gasoline pool to improve the efficiency of spark ignition (gasoline) engines. The refining industry faces great challenges to meet changing demand structure (more middle distillates, lower gasoline demand but higher octane gasoline) and investments running into hundreds of billions of dollars will be needed globally in the coming decades, e.g., to build new hydrocrackers, to meet this changing demand structure. Even if such investments are made, there will be a surplus of low-octane gasoline components like naphtha – “homeless hydrocarbons” which cannot be utilized in the gasoline pool. Highly efficient engines running on such fuels need to be developed to make refining economically attractive and avoid shortages of middle distillates. In fact, there is great scope for developing fuel/engine systems which are highly efficient, clean and use such components. Such an approach will bring benefits to the auto and oil industries and ensure efficient use of the barrel to make transport fuels and forms the basis of Saudi Aramco research and development strategy. The presentation will discuss the abundant potential of oil-based fuels for maximizing the reduction in GHG emissions through deploying sustainable mobility solutions that can be applied broadly (e.g. commercial transport, off-road and even stationary power generation), and when the fuel and engine optimized as one system where the burden is not shifted from one sector to the other (Well to Wheel (WtW) and even Cradle to Grave). Gasoline Compression Ignition (GCI) or Octane on Demand (OOD) engines offer such a prospect.

Professor Kee holds the George R. Brown Distinguished chair. Dr. Kee's research interests are primarily in modeling and simulation of chemically reacting fluid flow. Applications are generally in the area of clean energy, including fuel cells, photovoltaics, and advanced combustion.

Dr. Kee's sponsored-research efforts are primarily in the modeling and simulation of thermal and chemically reacting flow processes, with applications to combustion, electrochemistry, and materials manufacturing. His fuel-cell research concentrates on elementary chemistry and electrochemistry formulations and their coupling with reactive fluid flow. Primary applications are to solid-oxide fuel cells operating on hydrocarbon fuels. His combustion research emphasizes the use of elementary chemical kinetics to understand fundamental flame structure.

Recent research includes efforts on catalytic-combustion and water-mist flame suppression. The materials-processing efforts emphasize the design, optimization, and control of chemical-vapor-deposition processes, with applications ranging from thin-film photovoltaics to CMOS semiconductor devices. The work includes development of computational methods and software to solve systems of stiff differential equations. It also includes development of an extensive system of general-purpose chemical-kinetics and molecular-transport software.

Dr. Kee is the principal architect and developer of the CHEMKIN software, which is the leading software package used worldwide for simulating chemically reacting flow.

Robert J. Kee

Natural Gas: Beyond BurningRobert J. KeeColorado School of Mines, USA

Natural gas is a clean-burning fuel that is increasingly plentiful and inexpensive. Although there is no question that natural gas will continue to play a major role in applications such as combustion-based electricity generation, there are also opportunites for conversion to higher-value logistics fuels and commodity chemicals. However, because of the extraordinary volatility in oil and gas prices, economic preditions and investment decisions are difficult. Nevertheless, there are interesting aspects of process research and development that merit careful investigation.

Of course, gas-to-liquids is not a new technology. For example, alternative implementations of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis are established technologies that are practiced at commercial scales. Fischer-Tropsch processes begin by first reforming the natural gas to synthesis gas (mixture of H2 and CO). Assuming that a hydrocarbon is the desired product, then first oxidizing to syngas and then reducing to the final product represents an inherent inefficiency.

The presentation begins by briefly reviewing typical methane-reforming and Fischer-Tropsch technologies. The presentation goes on to explore process-intensification opportunities that are currently being investigated and developed to improve these processes. Process intensification includes microchannel reactors and permselective membranes.

In addition to opportunities for improving processes such as Fischer-Tropsch, there are other posibilities for essentially non-oxidative gas-conversion processes. These processes include methane dehydroaromatization (MDA) and oxidative coupling of methane (OCM). The MDA process is intended to produce benzene and the OCM is inended to produce ethylene. Both are catalytic deyhrogenation processes, which are demonstrated at the laboratory scale, but have not been scaled to commercial viability. As with methane reforming and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, the MDA and OCM processes can benefit from process intensification with microchannel and membrane reaactors.

Dr. Jay P. Gore is the Reilly University Chair Professor of Engineering and Associate Head for Graduate Programs in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. Dr. Gore previously served as the first Director of Purdue’s Energy Center in Discovery Park and Associate Dean for Research and Entrepreneurship in the College of Engineering. He founded and led the award-winning Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. Dr. Gore joined Purdue University as an Associate Professor and received early promotions to full Professor and University Chair Professor (Reilly Chair). He has authored or coauthored over 150 peer-reviewed papers, including a paper that earned the Best Paper of the Year award from ASME. Dr. Gore served as a Jefferson Science and Technology Fellow in the U.S. State Department. He has been the Chairman of the Central States Section of the International Combustion Institute and the Chairman of the ASME K11 Committee on Heat Transfer in Fire and Combustion. Dr. Gore has served as the Associate Editor of both the ASME Journal of Heat Transfer and the AIAA Journal.

Jay P. Gore

CO2 Management using Biomass Gasification with Solar EnergyJay P. GorePurdue University, USA

Coal burning power plants and petroleum engines that led to the industrial and transportation revolutions and provide power for the information revolution cannot be retired in the short term if ever. In fact, nature’s method of storing energy in hydrocarbon molecules may have to be emulated for storing renewable energy in the hydrocarbon molecule. A vision for the future involves the transformation of the petroleum fuel economy to a solar and wind driven synthetic fuel economy. Such a transformation can occur worldwide and particularly in regions of the current petroleum fuel economy. Recycling of CO2 molecule to hydrocarbon molecules can be accomplished using carbon molecules from coal and biomass. The energy required for this recycling can be obtained from the Sun and the slow rates of recycling in nature must be accelerated by affordable catalysts perhaps involving rust which is plentiful and must in fact be recycled itself. Significant research and development work is necessary to promote solar chemical reactors with nano catalysts. With this global model of catalytic CO2 recycling we must develop reliable rate constants for the controlling chemical, transport and thermal processes to lead to develop fuel synthesizers. Our work has recently suggested the reasons underlying the orders of magnitude differences in the rate constants of the CO2+C = 2CO reaction in the literature. The work also presents reliable models and constants for reactors of the future. The talk will conclude by highlighting the opportunity for new reactor designs for iron oxide catalyst based solar chemical synthesizers.

George Huber is the Harvey Spangler Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focus is on developing new catalytic processes for the production of renewable liquid fuels and chemicals. In 2015 Thomson Reuters has listed George as a “highly cited researcher” which indicates that he is “one of the “world’s most influential scientific minds” who rank in the top 1% most cited. He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications including three publications in Science. Patents and technologies he has helped develop have been licensed by three different companies. He has received several awards including the NSF CAREER award, the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the outstanding young faculty award (2010) by the college of engineering at UMass-Amherst. He has been named one of the top 100 people in bioenergy by Biofuels Digest for the past 3 years. He is co-founder of Anellotech (www.anellotech.com) a biochemical company focused on commercializing, catalytic fast pyrolysis, a technology to produce renewable aromatics from biomass. George serves on the editorial board of Energy and Environmental Science, ChemCatChem, Energy Technology, and The Catalyst Review. In June 2007, he chaired a NSF and DOE funded workshop entitled: Breaking the Chemical and Engineering Barriers to Lignocellulosic Biofuels (www.ecs.umass.edu/biofuels). In summer of 2015, George did a sabbatical visit with Professor Tao Zhang at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. George did a post-doctoral stay with Avelino Corma at the Technical Chemical Institute at the Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain (UPV-CSIC). He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005). He obtained his B.S. (1999) and M.S.(2000) degrees in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University.

George Huber

The Challenges and Opportunities of Developing Pioneer Catalytic Technologies for Production of Sustainable Fuels and Chemicals from BiomassGeorge HuberUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

In the past decade over $1.0 billion in private and public funds has been spent on the development of pioneer technologies for the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass into liquid transportation fuels and chemicals. Several of these technologies have failed at the commercial level and several of these companies have now gone bankrupt. The failure of these technologies is due to two fundamental reasons: 1. economic estimates under predicted the costs of these technologies; and 2. pilot and demonstration plants operated well below their designed capacity. In this presentation we will first present a predictive model on how to estimate the economics and operability of pioneer technologies. This analysis should be presented and used by any chemical engineer who is working on pioneer technologies.

I will then discuss different approaches for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals that are being developed both inside the Huber research group. The objective of the Huber research group is to develop pioneer catalytic processes and catalytic materials for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals from biomass, solar energy, and natural gas resources. We use a wide range of modern chemical engineering tools to design and optimize these clean technologies including: heterogeneous catalysis, kinetic modeling, reaction engineering, spectroscopy, analytical chemistry, nanotechnology, catalyst synthesis, conceptual process design, and theoretical chemistry.

Hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) is a platform technology used to convert liquid biomass feedstocks (including aqueous carbohydrates, pyrolysis oils, and aqueous enzymatic products) into alkanes, alcohols and polyols. In this process the biomass feed reacts with hydrogen to produce water and a deoxygenated product using a bifunctional catalyst that contains both metal and acid sites. The challenge with HDO is to selectively produce targeted products that can be used as fuel blendstocks or chemicals and to decrease the hydrogen consumption. I will discuss how to design improved non-precious metal catalytic materials to selective produce both liquid transportation fuels and higher value commodity chemicals from biomass using catalysts designed by atomic layer deposition (ALD). ALD is an emerging tool that allows to synthesize heterogeneous catalysts at the atomic level. I will discuss examples where the atomic precision has been used to elucidate reaction mechanisms and catalyst structure-property relationships by creating materials with a controlled distribution of size, composition, and active site.

We recently reported a new approach to produce levoglucosenone (LGO) from cellulose in yields up to 51% under mild reaction conditions (170-230 °C; 5-20 mM H2SO4) using polar, aprotic solvents such as tetrahydrofuran (THF). LGO can be used to make a wide variety of chemicals from biomass and has been termed the next HMF. The water content and solvent used in the reaction system control the product distribution. LGO is produced from the dehydration of levoglucosan (LGA). LGA is produced from cellulose depolymerization.

We believe that new catalytic conversion technologies have a tremendous potential for the production of renewable fuels and chemicals. As will be demonstrated in this presentation chemistry, chemical catalysis and chemical engineering are critical 21st century needs to help make renewable energy a practical reality.

Dr. Simmons joined Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA) in 2001 as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff, serving as a member of the Materials Chemistry Department. He was promoted to Manager of the Energy Systems Department in 2006. The primary focus of the department was the development of novel materials-based solutions to meet the nation’s growing energy demands. In 2007, he was one of the principal co-investigators of the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI, www.jbei.org), a ten year, $259M DOE funded project tasked with the development and realization of next-generation biofuels produced from non-food crops. He is currently serving as the Chief Science and Technology Officer and the Vice-President of the Deconstruction Division at JBEI, where he leads a team of 41 researchers working on advanced methods of liberating fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. He is also the Senior Manager of the Advanced Biomanufacturing Group at Sandia and serves as the Laboratory Relationship Manager for the Biomass Program. He has over 250 publications, book chapters, and patents. His work has been featured in the New York Times, BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Fast Company, and the KQED televised science program Quest.

Blake Simmons

Driving the Future: Advances in Renewable Fuels at the Joint BioEnergy InstituteBlake SimmonsJoint BioEnergy Institute, USA

Today, carbon-rich fossil fuels, primarily oil, coal and natural gas, provide 85% of the energy consumed in the United States. The high energy content of liquid hydrocarbon fuels makes them the preferred energy source for all modes of transportation. In the US alone, transportation consumes around 13.8 million barrels of oil per day and generates over 0.5 gigatons of carbon per year. This has spurred intense research into alternative, non-fossil energy sources. The DOE-funded Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) is a partnership between seven leading research institutions (Lawrence Berkeley Lab, Sandia Labs, Lawrence Livermore Lab, Pacific Northwest National Lab, UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis, and the Carnegie Institute for Science) that is focused on the production of infrastructure compatible biofuels derived from non-food lignocellulosic biomass. Biomass is a renewable resource that is potentially carbon-neutral. Plant-derived biomass contains cellulose, which is more difficult to convert to sugars. The development of cost-effective and energy-efficient processes to transform cellulose and hemicellulose in biomass into fuels is hampered by significant roadblocks, including the lack of specifically developed energy crops, the difficulty in separating biomass components, low activity of enzymes used to hydrolyze polysaccharides, and the inhibitory effect of fuels and processing byproducts on the organisms responsible for producing fuels from monomeric sugars. This presentation will highlight the research efforts underway at JBEI to overcome these obstacles, with a particular focus on the development of an ionic liquid pretreatment technology for the efficient production of monomeric sugars from biomass and the conversion of those sugars into renewable “drop-in” fuels.

Prof. Min Suk Cha obtained his PhD from Seoul National University in 1999. He was a principal research scientist in Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials, where he was a director of technology licensing office for a year. He joined KAUST as a principal research scientist in 2011, and he has been an associate professor since 2015 at KAUST. He specializes in plasma (electrically) assisted combustion including fuel reforming and after-treatment. Flame dynamics and laser diagnostics/spectroscopy are area of interests as well.

Min Suk Cha

Reformed Liquid Fuel Production Using Electrical DischargesMin Suk Cha, KAUST, Saudi Arabia

Techniques to reform liquid fuels are currently central to advancements in combustion technology. Recently, an aqueous discharge reactor was developed to facilitate the reformation of liquid fuels by in-liquid plasma. Here, we present an original technical approach to simultaneously produce a tailored synthetic liquid fuel and a syngas. In an aqueous discharge reactor with gaseous bubbles, we reformed an emulsified hydrocarbons (HCs)/water mixture. The higher dielectric permittivity of the mixture facilitates electrical discharges that cause the electron impact dissociation of HCs into alkyl and hydrogen radicals, while the addition of water also provides a steam-reforming environment inside the discharged bubbles. We added methane and carbon dioxide to the system because they dissociate into methyl and oxygen radicals, respectively, which prevent the alkyl-alkyl recombinations that result in the formation of long-chain hydrocarbons (HCs). Thus, we were able to control product selectivity by adding methane to increase the production of short-chain HCs and hydrogen gas or by adding carbon dioxide to increase the production of oxygenated fuels, such as alcohols. Using gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry we detail the compositions of both the synthetic liquid and the syngas, and we provide conceptual chemical mechanisms to selectively increase the production of oxygenates and that of HCs that are shorter or longer than the base fuel. The basis of this in-liquid discharge for the purpose of fuel reforming has potential applications to advanced engines to control ignition delay time, a continuing focus of study in our lab.

Dr. Benemann completed his B.S. in Chemistry and PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California Berkeley. He later joined as a post-doctoral fellow in U.C. San Diego. He is currently the CEO of MicroBio Engineering, Inc., a consulting engineering and R&D company in microalgae technologies and wastewater treatment founded with Prof. Tryg Lundquist, California State Polytechnic University, Cal Poly. Founding director, Algae Biomass Organization (ABO). Prior to this, he had worked as the Associate Researcher in the department of Civil Engineering and Plant and Microbial Biology, U.C. Berkeley, had founded two algal biotechnology and aquaculture companies, EnBio, Inc., and, later, SeaAg, Inc. with Dr. Joseph Weissman, and was also the Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology and Adjunct Professor, University Hawaii. He is also a consultant and advisor to U.S. and international agencies and companies.

John Benemann

Algae BiofuelsJohn BenemannMicroBio Engineering, Inc., USA

Algae, both micro- and macro-, the latter the seaweeds, are being considered by many researchers and technologists as potential future biofuel sources. Among the advantages often claimed by experts are:

• High, even extraordinary, biomass productivities, when compared to conventional crop plants; • Use of land not suited for agriculture, and even offshore, opening enormous areas for production; • Use of waste-, brackish-, sea- and other water sources not competing with agriculture; • Many algal species and production technologies – ponds, closed reactors, fermenters, floating, etc.; • Algal biomass can have high contents of oils, fermentable carbohydrates and other biofuel precursors;• Use CO2 from power plants or other sources; positive net greenhouse gas and life cycle assessments; • Low production costs projected with major advances in productivity and cultivation technologies; and• Co-production of commodity animal feeds and higher value nutritional and specialty bioproducts

Currently the main commercial algae products are human nutritionals products (‘nutraceuticals’) from microalgae and specialty bioproducts, particularly functional polysaccharides (carrageenans, agars, etc.) from seaweeds. Currently, industrial-scale production of microalgal biomass is above 10,000 tons, selling for over $10,000/t, and close to a million tons for seaweeds, selling for about $1,000/t. These are, of course, only best order of magnitude estimates, but indicate the large distance, in economics and scale, that these industries will have to bridge to achieve favorable economics and significant volumes of biofuels production, assuming more favorable markets in the future. These figures also suggest that for the foreseeable future, algal biofuels will be derived as co-products of higher value algae commodities or specialty products, or in conjunction with wastewater treatment and reclamation. However, such co-product have limited markets and would not justify any large biofuels R&D effort, except as stepping stones to the development of low-cost technologies for their larger-scale production.

Kevin Van Geem (associate professor) is member of the Laboratory for Chemical Technology of Ghent University. Thermochemical reaction engineering in general and in particular the transition from fossil to renewable resources are his main research interests. He is a former Fulbright Research Scholar of MIT and directs the Pilot plant for steam cracking and pyrolysis. He is the author of more than hundred scientific publications and has recently started his own spin-off company.

He is involved in on-line and off-line analysis of complex petrochemical and biochemical samples using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography. Direct experimental scale-up, detailed kinetic modeling, process modeling (Aspen, ProII), and the role of additives belong to his expertise.

Kevin M. Van Geem

Recent Advances (and continuing challenges) of Clean Fuel Production via Biomass Fast PyrolysisKevin M. Van GeemGhent University, Belgium

The European Commission, but also many other public and private organizations, believe that biomass for fuels and chemicals production will play a crucial role in meeting Europe’s “202020” targets: by the year 2020, greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 20%, renewable energy sources should represent 20% of Europe’s final energy consumption and energy efficiency should also increase by 20%.1 At the same time, fluctuating energy prices, due to changing fossil reserves force industry to diversify their energy input from a purely economical point of view.

Among the main biomass conversion technologies (combustion, gasification, pyrolysis) only pyrolysis converts biomass to high energy density liquids (bio-oil) at high yields and, hence, is the most suitable to fulfil the high future demands for biofuels and biochemicals. However, the presently available reactor technology for fast pyrolysis is far from optimal. Most fast pyrolysis reactor designs have not survived the pilot plant stage apart from the rare exception. Only the entrained flow bed reactor and the rotating cone reactor have been commercialized on a small scale. In this presentation, the focus is on a new reactor type known as the rotating bed reactor in a static geometry (RBR-SG). This reactor types is also sometimes referred to as a vortex reactor due to the presence of a fluid vortex in the interior gas-only region of the reactor. Fast pyrolysis of biomass is the prime candidate for implementation in RBR-SG technology because the high heating rates (h ~ 1 kW/m·K) and short gas-phase (~5 ms) residence time required for fast pyrolysis are two attributes of RBR-SG technology.

In the Laboratory for chemical Technology we are currently demonstrating a new disruptive technology for the conversion of biomass to chemicals and fuels via fast pyrolysis based on this innovative reactor concept. In our integrated approach of the problem, besides reactor engineering, focus is given, on one hand, on the genetic modification of plants to optimise liquids yields and, on the other, on the further purification, fractionation and extraction of valuable compounds from these liquid products.

The design and the operating conditions of this unit are determined by the implementation of a multi-scale approach that starts from a fundamental understanding of the occurring chemical reactions during biomass fast pyrolysis and accounting for the inherent differences of biomass composition. Extensive experimentation of a whole series of different experimental setups allows creating unique validation data for model compounds and specific feeds. On-line analysis using comprehensive 2D GC and Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry plays an essential role to close mass balances and obtain accurate data.

Robert L. McCormick is a Principal Engineer and Platform Leader in the Fuels Performance group of the Transportation and Hydrogen Systems Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL is a United States Department of Energy laboratory located in Golden, Colorado. The center is focused on researching technologies that reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Dr. McCormick leads a team focused on utilization of advanced biofuels. This research includes biofuel and blending component quality and quality specifications, fuel stability and handling, compatibility with modern engines and infrastructure, pollutant emissions effects, and impact on engine and emission control system durability. Over the past decade a major focus of this work has been utilization issues for biodiesel and ethanol. Increasingly his group’s research portfolio is examining advanced biofuels produced by a variety of processes and on fuel-engine co-optimization. Dr. McCormick holds a doctoral degree in chemical engineering. Following graduate school, he worked for a Fortune 500 company performing research on coal conversion technology. In 1994 he joined the faculty of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Refining at the Colorado School of Mines as a Research Professor where he pursued research in heterogenous catalysis and in understanding fuel chemistry effects on diesel engine emissions. He joined the staff at NREL in 2001. He is author or coauthor of nearly one hundred peer reviewed publications.

Robert L. McCormick

Co-Optimization of Internal Combustion Engines and BiofuelsRobert L. McCormickNational Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), USA

The development of advanced engines has significant potential advantages in reduced after treatment costs for air pollutant emission control, and just as importantly for efficiency improvements and associated greenhouse gas emission reductions. There are significant opportunities to leverage fuel properties to create more optimal engine designs for both advanced spark-ignition and compression-ignition combustion strategies. The fact that biofuel blendstocks offer a potentially low-carbon approach to fuel production, leads to the idea of optimizing the entire fuel production-utilization value chain as a system from the standpoint of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. This is a difficult challenge that has yet to be realized. This presentation will discuss the relationship between chemical structure and critical fuel properties for more efficient combustion, survey the properties of a range of biofuels that may be produced in the future, and describe the ongoing challenges of fuel-engine co-optimization.

Dr. Jeffrey Goldmeer is the Manager of Gas Turbine Combustion & Fuel Solutions at GE Gas Power Systems, based in Schenectady, NY. Jeffrey is responsible for strategic development of gas turbine products and combustion technologies for emerging fuel applications around the globe, including leadership of GE’s industry-leading activities in burning crude oil on F-class turbines in Saudi Arabia. Prior to this role, Jeffrey was the Manager of the Combustion Systems Lab at GE’s Global Research Center.

Before joining GE in 2001, Jeffrey performed research on low-gravity combustion and innovative optical diagnostics at the NASA Glenn Research Center as National Research Council Post-doc Research Associate and a NASA Graduate Researcher. As part of his research, he performed experiments onboard NASA’s low-gravity research flight lab (aka “the vomit comet”). As an accomplished leader in the energy and power generaNon industry with expertise in combustion and fuels, Jeffrey has over 16 years of experience developing technology, new products, and commercialization strategies. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University. Jeffrey has 11 patents related to power generation, combustion technology, and advanced instrumentation.

Jeffrey Goldmeer

Power Generation Using Alternative Fuels Jeffrey GoldmeerGeneral Electric, USA

Multiple countries and customers around the world are looking for alternative fuels to replace natural gas and/or distillate (diesel) fuel for domestic power generation. This includes both gas and liquid fuel alternatives. Alternative gases include ethane, propane (LPG) and even sour gas. Alternative liquids include crude oil, condensates and residuals (i.e. heavy fuel oils). GE has evaluated a wide range of fuels for power generation applications, and many of these fuels are in use today, or in the planning stages for use.

From a gas perspective, customers are investigating the potential to use sour gases, which have higher levels of sulfur or H2S. If a fuel contains H2S, not only is there a potential risk for acid based corrosion, but the fuel itself may be toxic. Because this type of fuel presents unique challenges from an environmental, safety, and maintenance perspective, additional measures are required for plant operation.

In other cases, power plant owners and operators are looking at alternative liquid fuels for power generation applications. Liquid fuels are found in a continuum of densities, ranging from very light condensates and crude oils, to higher density crude oils and residuals. A major challenge with alternative liquid fuels is the potential for hot corrosion due to the presence of alkali metals (i.e. sodium) or other corrosive elements (i.e. vanadium). These fuels were typically limited to use in E-class turbines, in part because of the high levels of vanadium.

However, in the last few years, Arabian Super Light (ASL) and Arabian Extra Light (AXL) crude oils, which have relatively lower vanadium levels, have become available as new power generation fuels. As part of ongoing efforts to expand gas turbine fuel capabilities, GE performed an evaluation of these oils using a variety of facilities. Today, GE has operated ASL on F-class gas turbines at the PP11 and PP12 power plants in Saudi Arabia.

This presentation will provide an overview of the challenges of operating a gas turbine on alternative fuels, the impact that these fuels may have on gas turbine performance and maintenance, as well as GE’s successful experience with a wide range of alternative fuels.

Bengt Johansson is professor at the Clean Combustion Research Center at KAUST since January 2016. He was Professor in Internal Combustion Engines at Lund University 2001-2015 and head of the combustion engine group there 2004-2015. He was also director of the Centre of Competence Combustion Processes with a number of international industry partners 2003-2015. His is among the leaders in low temperature combustion research and has published more than 250 papers within HCCI.

He was part time professor at TU Eindhoven, the Netherlands 2011-2015 and chairman of the SAE Engine Combustion Committee 2012-2015 and was 2006-2015 chair for the HCCI fuels collaborative task within the International Energy Agency, IEA.

Bengt Johansson

The Path Towards a 60% Efficient Internal Combustion EngineBengt JohanssonKAUST, Saudi Arabia

The internal combustion engine has great potential for high fuel efficiency. The ideal otto and diesel cycles can easily achieve more than 70% thermodynamic efficiency. The problems come when those cycles should be implemented in a real engine. Extreme peak pressure during the cycle will call for a very robust engine structure that in turn will increase friction and hence reduce mechanical efficiency. A very high compression ratio also increase the surface to volume ratio and promote heat losses, taking away much of the benefits from the theoretical cycle. The presentation will start with a standard SI engine and it’s efficiency as a function of load. Then a high compression ratio SI with be introduced and compared with the same engine oper-ated in HCCI mode. The four efficiencies of SI as well as HCCI will be discussed. A next step is the results with Partially Premixed Combustion. With PPC the indicated efficiency was shown to be up to 57%, thus 10% up from the best HCCI engine of 47%. However, to get the very high efficiency a high dilution level is needed. This is a challenge for the gas management system and hence gas exchange and mechanical efficiencies can suffer. The final part of the presentation is giving an engine concept that can enable the conditions for PPC combustion but with much improved gas exchange and mechanical efficiency. It enables an effective compression ratio in excess of 60:1 but with much less cylinder surface area. The concept also enables low friction and hence high mechanical efficiency. The basic concept will be explained and initial simulation results will be presented.

Dr. Larfeldt studied mechanical engineering at KTH Stockholm and graduated in 1991. She defended her thesis on solid fuel pyrolysis at department of Energy conversion, Chalmers, Gothenburg in year 2000. She later worked with an R&D consultancy company for eight years involved in biomass gasification and combustion facilities. In 2004 she joined Siemens as a manager of the combustion team in the R&D organisation. From 2007 and on Dr. Larfeldt became responsible for gas turbine combustor technology development and was appointed Senior Combustor Expert in 2014. Since 2015 Dr. Larfeldt is the global Technology Field Lead in Combustion within Siemens Power Generation.

Jenny Larfeldt

Fuel Utilization in Flexible Industrial Gas TurbinesJenny LarfeldtSiemens Turbomachinery, Sweden

Gas turbines offer an efficient conversion of natural gas into electricity approaching 40% electric efficiency, and in a plant configuration in which exhaust heat is used for generation of steam to a turbine the efficiency is nowadays almost 61%. The application areas of gas turbines are widening from natural gas-fired base-load operation to either fuel-flexible base load or a plant for covering daily variations. The introduction of renewables in the power grid, wind and solar, increases the market for fast start and ramping production. Potential future legislation or economical incitement for carbon capture will be a driver for special types of gas-turbine plants. Gas turbines are not only required to operate reliable with high performance and low emissions but also to do so with increased operational flexibility, varying fuels and potentially optimized for CO2 capture.

Stationary gas turbines are continuously flowed through fixed-drive machines with high power den-sities, meaning that they deliver a large amount of energy in relation to their size and weight. The compact design involves the core components: compressor, combustor and turbine. The combustion process takes place at a pressure generated by the compressor and the airflow including the products of combustion (and excess air) is then delivered to the turbine which drives the compressor as well as generating power to the generator or other external equipment depending on application.

In order to offer a gas turbine product with increased fuel flexibility both the core engine and aux-iliary systems must be taken in to account, however the primary issue is the stable operation of the combustor. Experience from design of commercial combustion systems like power plant boilers is of little use when designing a gas-turbine combustion system. Unlike other applications, the exhaust gas stream temperature from the combustor has to be comparatively low to suit the highly stressed turbine materials. The exhaust gas stream has to be controlled so that the temperature and velocity distributions do not cause local overheating and for the turbine to deliver the desired power. The temperature distribution in the combustor is not only of importance from a component lifetime perspective but also very important for emissions control. The prevailing technique in industrial gas turbines today is lean, premixed combustion systems which have replaced water or steam injection for emission control purposes. The emission of nitrous oxides, NOx, is strongly related to the local temperature in the combustion zone. Premixing the fuel with more air than what is needed from a stoichiometric point of view leads to the desired flame with several hundred degrees lower tem-perature than the adiabatic flame temperature. Such lean flames are prone to instabilities such as oscillating heat release which may in worst case interact with pressure fluctuations depending on the combustor design acoustic properties. The control of thermo-acoustic combustor oscillations is a key issue when developing low emission gas turbines

Dr. Suk Ho Chung is Named Professor in Mechanical Engineering at KAUST since 2009 and the Founding Director of the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC). He has served as a professor in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Seoul National University in Korea. Additionally, he served as Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Advanced Automotive Research Center.He has published over 180 articles in international journals. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He served as Board of Directors and International Secretary of the Combustion Institute and Program Co-chair for 35th International Symposium on Combustion. His services include Vice President of the Korea Society of Automotive Engineers and the Korea Society of Combustion, Editorial board member of Combustion and Flame and Editor-in-chief of International Journal of Automotive Technology (IJAT). He earned his doctoral and master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University, Illinois, in the United States. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Seoul National University in Korea.

Suk Ho Chung

Fuel Effect on Soot Formation in Diffusion FlamesSuk Ho ChungKAUST, Saudi Arabia

Soot formation process is one of the most complex phenomena in thermal engineering involving fuel pyrolysis, incipient ring formation, PAH formation and growth, soot inception, growth, agglomeration and oxidation. Many of chemical reactions are involved in the process and are coupled with flow characteristics. Chemical cross-linking effect in fuel mixtures on soot and PAH formations will be discussed first for ethylene/propane fuels and extended to gasoline surrogate fuels. Kinetic mechanism development for PAH growth and soot modeling will be introduced along with sooting limit behavior.

Dr. Deutschmann completed his MS in Physics from the Humboldt University and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Heidelberg University in the year 1991 and 1996 respectively. He joined as a Post Doctorial Fellow with Lanny D. Schmidt in the year 1997 at the University of Minnesota, USA. In the year 1999 he joined as Ass. Professor at Heidelberg University. Later he joined as Assoc. Professor for Chemical Technology, University of Karlsruhe in Germany. He is currently the Professor and Chair in Chemical Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)

Olaf Deutschmann

Catalytic Reduction of Combustion Pollutants Olaf DeutschmannKarlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Catalytic reactions are widely used to reduce combustion pollutants such NOx, CO, hydrocarbons, and particulate matter for automobile and stationary applications for a long time. Even though exhaust-gas after-treatment by oxidation catalysts and three-way catalysts have been on the market for decades, improved and novel technologies and catalysts are needed to accomplish current and future challenges caused by lower legislative emission limits, new fuels, and more efficient engine concepts. This contribution provides an overview on the state-of-the art mobile and stationary exhaust-gas after-treatment devices and the current technological trends. It will be discussed how detailed catalyst characterization and modeling can support the understanding, development, and optimization of catalytic converters. Special attention is given on lean and low temperature exhaust-gas after-treatment systems such as diesel oxidation catalyst, selective catalytic NOx reduction by ammonia, NOx storage catalysts. Furthermore, reduction of pollutant emissions (methane, formaldehyde) from gas engines will be discussed.

Kai Morganti holds a BE(Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering from RMIT University (2008) and a PhD from the University of Melbourne (2013), both in Australia. Kai has more than seven years of experience working in various automotive and powertrain testing facilities. Much of this work has been collaborative, often involving activities with government, industry and other research institutions. His work has encompassed both fundamental and applied aspects of transport and energy systems, with particular focus on powertrain design and utilizing alternative fuels in reciprocating engines.

Kai joined the Saudi Aramco Research & Development Center in the position of Research Scientist in December 2014. He currently leads the In-house Octane-on-Demand program, and oversees research activities in the areas of gasoline formulation, engine modeling for advanced combustion modes and vehicle platforms, along with fundamental and applied studies of preignition and superknock in spark-ignition engines. Kai is a Director of the Society of Automotive Engineers Australasia (SAE-A) and a member of the Board of Officers of the Saudi Arabian Section of the Combustion Institute.

Kai Morganti

Fuel Utilization in Advanced Spark-Ignition EnginesKai MorgantiSaudi Aramco, Saudi Aramco

Reciprocating engines will remain the dominant energy conversion device utilized in the road transport sector for the foreseeable future. This proven technology platform continues to offer cost advantages over competing technologies, while benefiting from a comprehensive global fuel distribution network. In recent years, conventional powertrains have also benefited from varying degrees of hybridization, along with the inclusion of other low cost “bolt-on” technologies that can further reduce vehicle fuel consumption. Engine downsizing has also proven to be a particularly effective strategy, but is ultimately limited by the increased susceptibility to knock.

The introduction of these technologies in light-duty vehicles has coincided with a substantial reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions; often at equivalent or enhanced vehicle performance. But this shift has also placed greater emphasis on eliminating (or at least reducing) the traditional constraints that prevent spark-ignition engines from operating at high load. Indeed, if substantial fuel economy and performance benefits are to be achieved from this strategy, then the traditional high load constraints must be eliminated while concurrently expanding the region of the speed-load envelope where the engine can be operated at or near its minimum brake specific fuel consumption.

These challenges cannot be addressed by automakers alone. Instead, further efficiency gains from future spark-ignition engines are likely to be dependent upon close collaboration between automakers and fuel producers. This presentation will address some of these challenges, and discuss how a synergistic approach to engine-fuel design can provide a range of economic, social and environmental benefits for all stakeholders.

Uwe Riedel is a Professor in the faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stuttgart University and the head of the department Chemical Kinetics of the DLR Institute of Combustion Technology since 2008. He received his Diploma in Physics in 1988 and his PhD in 1992 from Heidelberg University. After a postdoc year at Sandia National Laboratories Livermore he joined the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing of Heidelberg University as an assistant professor until 2008.

His research fields cover: Reaction kinetics of combustion processes including alternative fuels, thermodynamic data for combustion processes, biomass gasification, catalytic combustion, droplet combustion, spark and laser ignition, plasma chemistry and ions, exhaust gas cleaning using plasma sources, re-entry flows, Computational Fluid Dynamics, and numerical methods for reacting flow simulations. He has published 56 papers in peer-reviewed ISI-listed journals with more than 600 citations; in total 140 papers in journals and conference proceedings, and chapters in 4 reference books. He also is a reviewer for more than 20 scientific journals and 10 funding agencies.

Uwe Riedel

About the interaction between composition and performance of alternative jet fuels: Tools from molecules to aircraft combustion chamberUwe RiedelGerman Aerospace Center, Germany

Since the last decade, the aviation sector is looking for alternatives to kerosene derived from crude oil. This has been triggered by major stakeholders and policy packages worldwide: IATA, the International Air Transport Association, is committed to the vision of carbon neutral growth starting 2020 and to halve emissions by 2050 compared to 2005-levels. ACARE, the Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe, has announced their goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 50% in 2020 and by 75% by 2050 relative to year-2000 aircrafts. The 'Flightpath 2050' EC-initiative aims at a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions and 90% reduction in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions.

Fuel requirements are very strict. There are severe constraints to ensure a safe and reliable operation for the whole flight envelope. When synthesizing a jet fuel two important aspects need to be addressed: The safety aspect - the new fuel candidate must be certified, qualifying through several well-defined cost and time expensive tests, according to the approval protocol. On top of this, there is the environmental aspect of pollutants and CO2.

Alternative aviation fuels - like Jet A-1 - are composed of hydrocarbons; however, the amounts and type of hydrocarbons (chemical family) differ considerably. The question is how the composition of the fuel will affect its suitability and performance: (i) What are the thermo-physical and thermo-chemical properties of the new components to exclude any shortcomings with respect to performance and safety issues? And (ii) what is the new fuels combustion characteristics, i.e., ignition, flame speed, and emission pattern (pollutants)?

These questions will be addressed in the talk. The tools and methods developed and available at DLRs Institute of Combustion Technology, spanning from models on fuel molecules to measurements in real combustion chambers, will be presented. Ideas towards a science-based approach to predict in an efficient way whether a new fuel candidate may meet currant and future fuel specifications will be exemplified.

Tiziano Faravelli is a Full Professor at the Politecnico di Milano in Italy since 2004. He received his M.S. in Chemical Engineering in the year 1986 and defended his PhD thesis in the year 1990. After working as Senior Engineer in the R&D department at KTI, Italy until 1993, he joined as Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano and got promoted as Associate Professor in the year 1998.

His Research interests include numerical fluidynamics of reactive flows, turbulence/kinetics interactions chemical reaction engineering of complex systems, pyrolysis, partial oxidation and combustion modeling of gas, liquid and solid fuels and pollutant formation (NOx, PAH and soot) from combustion processes.

Tiziano Faravelli

Modeling oxygenated biofuel combustionTiziano FaravelliPolitecnico di Milano, Italy

The usage of biofuels as clean fuel, particularly for transportation, is promising to solve the energy shortage and relieve environment pollution in particular as concerns the greenhouse gases emissions.

In general, many kinetic studies have been presented in the literature on the different families of oxygenated species of biofuels. Nevertheless a systematic characterization of the influence of the oxygenated functional groups in terms of relative reactivity is still lacking.Another particularity of biofuels is the possible presence of double bonds in their chain. These double bonds can modify the reactivity of the molecules, but they especially impact on their emissions.

A further consequence of the presence of heteroatoms and double bonds is the loss of any symmetry in the molecule, thus increasing the complexity of the mechanisms which can describe the fuel oxidation. To face the rising problem of mechanism dimensions two main strategies can be adopted. From one side, it is possible to reduce the number of compounds, using both lumping techniques and automatic scheme reduction. On the other side it is also possible to improve the numerical methods for the equation solution.

This work aims at presenting the activity that the CRECK-modeling group at Politecnico di Milano has carried out during the last years in modeling the pyrolysis, oxidation and combustion of biofuels, with a particular attention to the challenges that these molecules need to control the huge number of species required by their kinetic mechanisms.

Prof. Farooq received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University in 2010. Presently, he is the principal investigator of the Chemical Kinetics and Laser Sensors Laboratory in the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC) at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). His research interests are in the areas of energy, combustion chemistry, spectroscopy, and laser-based sensors. His group carries out experimental chemical kinetics research using shock tubes, rapid compression machine and optical diagnostics. Dr. Farooq also focuses on novel spectroscopic strategies to develop sensors for biomedical and environment-monitoring applications. He has authored over 50 refereed journal articles and has presented at a number of international conferences.

Aamir Farooq

Ignition and Elementary Studies of Future FuelsAamir FarooqKAUST, Saudi Arabia

The fuel landscape has steadily been changing and is expected to evolve at a much rapid pace over the coming years. There will be a shift towards low-grade fuels for power generation and transportation. Additionally, biofuels will see increased usage in the form of blending components to fossil fuels for achieving higher performance. In this context, we have recently been carrying out experimental and modeling work to predict ignition characteristics of alternative fuels and to formulate suitable surrogates. Shock tubes and rapid compression machine are used as homogeneous reactors to measure fuel reactivity and autoignition behavior. Additionally, sensitive laser-based measurement and ab-initio calculations are employed to target critical elementary reactions that control fuel pyrolysis and oxidation.

Angela Violi is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Biophysics and Macromolecular Science and Engineering. Violi received her B.S. (Suma cum laude) and her PhD in Chemical Engineering (highest distinction) from the University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy in 1999. She then worked as Postdoc and Research Associate at the University of Utah in one of the 5 Centers created through the Department of Energy's Advanced Simulation and Computing Program, whose objective was to develop science-based tools for the numerical simulation of accidental fires and explosions. Violi became an Assistant professor in 2006, and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2009. In 2015 she became Full Professor.

Violi’s research interests lie at the intersection of nanoscience, biomedical science, and combustion. Her research involves the study, through modeling and simulation, of nanoparticle formation and the impact of these particles on the environment. Violi has pioneered the development of computational nanoscience in the field of combustion in essentially single-handed fashion developing Multiscale Computational methods to study long time and large scale phenomena. Her work provides the first atomistic model for particle formation in combustion systems and it is considered a landmark in combustion research.

She also works on reaction mechanisms for novel fuels and her work on modeling of jet fuels using surrogates that reproduce the combustion behavior of the real fuels is attracting considerable interest from the military for energy security reasons. She is currently the Thrust Area Leader for Advanced Biofuels and Combustion for a DOE funded US-China Clean Energy Research Center for Clean Vehicles. She is coordinating efforts between research groups at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Lab, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tsinghua University, Ohio University and University of Michigan with the specific aim of creating an applicable framework for synthesis of next generation fuels, and their combustion in advanced engines.

Angela Violi

Conventional and Alternative Fuels: From Surrogate Development to Nanoparticl Formation and their Health EffectsAngela VioliUniversity of Michigan, USA

The process of combustion is the dominant pathway through which mankind continuously injects particulate into the atmosphere. These combustion-generated particles are present not only in very large amounts, but they are produced, at the smallest scale in the form of clusters with nanometric dimensions. Although the total mass of particulate emissions has been significantly reduced with improvement of combustion efficiency and emissions control systems, the very small nanoparticles are exceedingly difficult to control by the emission systems typically installed on vehicles. In addition, the current emissions regulations are mass-based and do not address the presence of nanoparticles. Predictive models of nanoparticle formation and oxidation that provide detailed chemical structures of the particles currently do not exist, a fact that greatly limits our ability to control important chemical processes. In this talk we report on our latest work to develop such a model.

Specifically, we will address the following topics:1. Chemistry of real fuels: a. Development of surrogates – examples from conventional and alternative jet fuels to use in engines; b. A new approach to develop reaction mechanisms2. Formation of nanoparticles in combustion: a. Effect of fuel on formation of nanoparticles – examples include oxygenated fuels b. Identification of the driving physical and chemical mechanisms for the formation of nanoparticles;3. Health effects: a. Effects of nanoparticle properties on the interactions with biological cells

The common intellectual thread among these topics is the application of atomistic approaches, including molecular dynamics simulations, which are tailored for the specifics of each subject and coupled with pertinent longer scale processes and systems.

Our goal is to provide critical insight to develop the next generation of soot models with the capability to predict correctly the nucleation process, and hence the number of particles, together with the evolution of their chemical composition, using conventional and alternative fuels. The results will also aid the community of engine

Mani Sarathy is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology of Science and Technology (KAUST) in the Clean Combustion Research Center (CCRC). Mani was previously a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Combustion Chemistry group at the US Department of Energy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. During that time he held a prestigious fellowship from NSERC of Canada. Mani received his PhD and MASc degrees in Environmental and Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto and his BASc in Environmental Engineering Chemical Specialization from the University of Waterloo. In 2015, Mani Sarathy was named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher. Mani’s research interest is in developing sustainable energy technologies with decreased net environmental impact. A major thrust of research is simulating the combustion chemistry of transportation fuels. The goal of Mani’s research is study conventional and alternative fuels (e.g., biofuels, synthetic fuels, etc.), so the environmental impact of combustion systems can be reduced.

S. Mani Sarathy

Simulation Driven Fuel Design: Atoms-to-Engines and Wells-to-WheelsS. Mani SarathyKAUST, Saudi Arabia

A difficult question to answer is “what is the ideal fuel for future engines?”. The combustion performance and pollutant emissions of a particular fuel are dictated by the physical and chemical properties of its constituent molecules. In addition, life cycle issues related to fuel production, distribution, and end-use need to be carefully considered. Our goal is to enable simulation driven fuel design by developing a fuel formulation strategy based on first-principles of engineering and science. We have developed a broad scientific methodology that can be applied to better understand the combustion of real world fuels in their respective technologies, as well as a systems-based approach to evaluating the environmental and economic impacts of novel fuel formulations. We demonstrate a concerted effort towards optimal blending strategies for alternative fuels (e.g., oxygenates) with petroleum hydrocarbon fuels. This talk presents recent results on formulating high anti-knock quality fuels for use in next-generation downsized turbocharged direct injection spark ignition engines. Fundamental chemical kinetic models are used to predict the ignition chemistry of alternative fuels blended with petroleum hydrocarbons. The suitability of these mixtures for improving engine performance is then demonstrated in single cylinder engine experiments. Finally, petroleum refinery process models are coupled with fuel life cycle models and turbocharged engine simulations to find optimal blends that can achieve sustainability targets.

Frederick L. Dryer received a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1966 and a Ph.D. degree in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences from Princeton University in 1972. Dr. Dryer served on the Professional Research Staff in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department from 1971-1981. He joined the tenured faculty in 1981 and was promoted to full professor in 1983. He served as the Undergraduate Departmental Representative from 1984-1987, and as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 1987-1990.

Dr. Dryer is a former associate editor and editorial board member of Combustion Science and Technology, co-editor for the Proceedings of the 26th and 27th International Symposiums on Combustion, and a former editorial board member of the International Journal of Chemical Kinetics and of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science. He is currently a member of the Combustion Institute (2012 Egerton Gold Medal Awardee; 2014 Invited Plenary Speaker), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (Fellow), the Society of Automotive Engineers (Fellow), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Associate Fellow; 2014 Propulsion and Combustion Medal), the American Chemical Society, and the National Fire Protection Association.

Dr. Dryer has published extensively and consulted for the government, industry and the legal profession on combustion, fire safety, energy, and emissions-abatement-related subjects. His services on advisory committees include efforts for the National Materials Advisory Board/National Research Council (five times), NASA, DOE-BES, DOE-ARPA-E, DARPA, ARO, and NIST.

Frederick L. Dryer

Combustion and Emissions Properties of Heavy OilsFrederick L. Dryer Princeton University, USA

Historically, heavy fuels have been utilized primarily in Rankin cycle stationary power generation, and low speed marine diesel applications. The quality of these fuels are considerably more variable than lighter distillates or gasolines, and they typically contain the majority of residual crude oil and refining contaminants such as sulfur, metals, and ash. The physical and chemical properties of these fuels lead to formation of carbon-containing particulate mass evolved from gas phase soot formation (driven by their aromatic content) as well as from liquid phase cracking/coking phenomena that occur within the atomized fuel droplets. The (cenospheric) particulate internal structure and size distribution derived from the liquid phase and its sequestered ash and metal contents strongly influence the rate of heterogeneous oxidation of remaining carbon, while the aerodynamic and material properties of the cenospheric particulates can contribute to erosion and corrosion of combustion/energy extraction device surfaces. Fuel atomization and mixing along with reaction characteristic time scales therefore have significantly more complex, enhanced sensitivities to achieving minimum carbon and NOx emissions. While stationary Rankin cycle use has waned as a result of emissions regulation over the past twenty five years, open-sea marine use of heavy fuels has continued to grow, contributing significantly to global particulate and NOx emissions. Though early use of heavy oil/marine distillate mixtures and water-oil emulsion technologies in aero-derived marine gas turbines in marine shipping were successful, heavy oil (and crude) use in stationary gas turbines for power generation is a topic of present, expanding interest.

This presentation will overview the properties of heavy oils and crudes, fundamental research on their combustion behaviors, and the coupling of properties with operations in applied systems. Areas where additional fuels and combustion research can contribute to improving application efficiencies and emissions will be addressed.

Hong G. Im received his B.S. and M.S. in from Seoul National University, and Ph.D. from Princeton University. After postdoctoral researcher appointments at the Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University, and at the Combustion Research Facility, Sandia National Laboratories, he held assistant/associate/full professor positions at the University of Michigan. He joined KAUST in January 2013 as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, and is an Associate Fellow of AIAA and a Fellow of ASME. He has also served as an Associate Editor for the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and is currently on the Editorial Board for Journal of Combustion. His research is focused on fundamental aspects of chemically reacting flows utilizing state-of-the-art supercomputers and computational algorithms, towards next generation combustion devices at higher efficiencies and lower emissions. Current research activities include ignition characteristics of combustible mixtures in compression ignition engines, predictive modeling of soot formation in flames, high-fidelity modeling of spray and combustion in modern engines, dynamics of turbulent premixed flame propagation, bluff-body flame stabilization in gas turbines, plasma and electric field effects on flames, and combustion of low grade and alternative fuels.

Hong G. Im

Predictive Simulations of Low Grade Fuel CombustionHong G. ImKAUST, Saudi Arabia

Combustion of low grade fuels involves a wide variety of complex physical and chemical processes including thermal decomposition, phase change, heterogeneous chemistry, multi-component transport and reactions. The presentation will highlight recent developments in comprehensive high fidelity simulations of low grade fuels for laboratory scale combustors. First, physical and chemical surrogate models are designed to predict differential evaporation and heterogeneous chemistry of the complex fuels in order to describe the correct composition of the gas-phase fuels, for which reduced-order lumped evaporation and reaction models are incorporated. Subsequently, a systematic framework to develop reduced kinetic mechanisms to describe gas-phase combustion is presented. Finally, integration of the developed submodels in spray combustor is undertaken using the OpenFOAM platform. Some test simulations and validation results are presented.

Christian Hasse is professor in the faculty of mechanical and chemical process engineering at the University of Technology Freiberg. He holds the chair of Numerical Thermo-Fluid Dynamics (www.ntfd.tu-freiberg.de) at which currently 20 PhD students and post-docs are working. He received his diploma in mechanical engineering in 1998 and his PhD in 2004 from RWTH Aachen University. After working for BMW in engine development of 5.5 years, he returned to academia in 2010.

His research topics are all centered around the simulation of reactive and non-reactive flows: and cover specifically: Flamelet-modelling, turbulent mixing dynamics, multi-component sprays and evaporation, engine combustion, pollutant formation, population balance modelling, exhaust gas cleaning. For these topics, a number of specialized software tools are available ranging from flexible 1D flame solvers to full 3D DNS codes.

He has published 65 papers in peer-reviewed journals with more than 550 citations. He also is a reviewer for more than 15 scientific journals and several national and international funding agencies.

Christian Hasse

Energetic and Non‐Energetic Use of Low‐Grade Fuels: Scientific Challenges From a Combustion Point of ViewChristian HasseTechnische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany

Low-grade fuels are used both in energetic and non-energetic applications. As an example for energetic use, low calorific gases are used in a variety of burners to either produce heat or electricity. On the other hand, conversion processes in the framework of non-energetic use of low-grade fuels often produce hydrogen-rich gases such as syngas (CO/H2) or other primary chemicals. These enter into subsequent processes e.g. for the production of plastics or synthetic fuels.

One prominent example of a high temperature conversion process to produce syngas is (non-catalytic) partial oxidation/gasification. A variety of feedstocks are currently used and these include heavy fuel oils, coals of various ranks and biomass. Compared to combustion, gasification reactors are operated fuel-rich (global equivalence ratio ϕ > 2.5) and almost pure oxygen is used as an oxidizer. The fuel conversion in the gas phase can usually be divided into two steps. First, the oxygen is burnt along with some of the fuel in a diffusion–type flame. In the post-flame zone characterized by slow endothermic reforming reactions, the remaining fuel is mixed with the hot combustion products and this mixture reacts further to syngas. Depending on the feedstock, the initial fuel conversion can become even more complex, e.g. for solid feedstocks both pyrolysis and heterogeneous char conversion need to be accounted for. Another example are heavy fuel oils where chemical reactions in the liquid phase must be considered before the fuel can evaporate.

Both combustion and gasification of low-grade fuels introduce a number of scientific challenges in addition to standard air-combustion of well-known hydrocarbon fuels. These include the kinetics of the feedstock or the turbulence-chemistry interaction for slow gas-phase chemistry.

A number of these issues will be addressed in the talk. After the presentation of several application examples, the scientific challenges are introduced and examples are presented on how to gain physical understanding. Based on this understanding, models are developed based on a combined numerical-experimental approach.

Dr. Roberts’ research interests include experimental combustion, propulsion, and laser-based optical diagnostics for reacting flows. Of fundamental interest is the complex interaction between the various length and velocity scales in turbulent flows and the chemical kinetics associated with combustion. His focus is on understanding these interactions in canonical flames, using advanced techniques to measure scalar and vector quantities of interest. He is currently establishing a unique high-pressure combustion capability at KAUST which will be used to understand combustion phenomena, particularly formation of pollutants such as soot, occurring in practical combustion hardware such as gas turbines and internal combustion engines. Other projects include measurement of unstretched laminar burning velocity of gasolines and it surrogates, measuring soot morphology at high pressures, developing novel propulsion devices for high efficiency or specific impulse, and cenosphere formation from combustion of heavy fuel oils.

Dr. Roberts received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992. Prior to this, he worked in the Strategic Defense Initiative Office for two years and worked at NASA Langley on SCRAMJET concepts after defending his dissertation. He joined NC State University in 1994, where he rose through the academic ranks until leaving for KAUST in 2012.

William L. Roberts

Cenosphere Formation in Heavy Fuel Oil CombustionWilliam L. RobertsKAUST, Saudi Arabia

Associated with the combustion of heavy fuel oil, HFO, a large number of carbonaceous solid particles in different size ranges are produced. These particles, known as cenospheres, are typically much larger than soot particles with very different composition, are a major concern because of the increase usage of HFO in power plants and marine engines due to its discounted price compared with distillates. The formation of these carbonaceous particles during the combustion of HFO has direct negative effects on the operation of the boilers, increasing the maintenance cost while decreasing the combustion efficiency while violating current emission regulations. We wish to understand the inBluence of HFO composition on cenosphere morphology by investigating single droplets burning in a drop tube furnace. SEM, TEM, EDX studies of several cenospheres samples collected from the combustion of single droplet heavy fuel oil combustion under conditions relevant to practical applications, revealed two distinct micro-structures; one being regular in surface topology and the other having very distinct surface features. The dominate morphology is related to the thermal history of the oil droplet and co-Blow rate of the oxidizer in this particular burner geometry.

The 2016 KAUST Future Fuels Workshop is organized by The Clean Combustion Research Center with financial support from the KAUST Office of Sponsored Research and Co-Sponsored by KAUST Industry Collaboration Program (KICP), Industry Engagement

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