Role of Hydrocarbon Building Blocks on Gas-to-Liquid Derived Synthetic Jet Fuel Characteristics Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The role of typical hydrocarbon building blocks of gas-to-liquid (GTL) derived jet fuels on their physical and chemical properties have been investigated. The ultimate goal of our studies is to develop accurate composition-property relationships for synthetic fuels to be used in optimizing synthetic fuel properties as per the aviation industry standards. The composition-property analysis has been carried out through formulating in-house fuel blends using neat GTL fuel building blocks (normal-, iso-, and cyclo-paraffins). Typical properties of interest in this study are density, freezing point, flash point, and heat content, all of which are essential for jet fuel certification. The systematic approach developed in this study was to identify an optimized region, in which all major properties for aviation standards are met. Different techniques were used, including the development of ternary mapping of these aforementioned building blocks alongside their physical properties. This has been achieved through formulating 35 blends giving a broad spread across the ternary map and generating a database from the experimental results. The optimized region and the composition-property relationships were obtained through building a statistical model of artificial neutral networks (ANNs) using the data generated as its basis. The generated data show that some properties, such as freezing point, exhibit nonlinear results whereas others are strongly linear, such as density and heat content. Aromatics in jet fuels are impactful (and required) even though their environmental harms are evident, and as such, their role on certain properties was preliminarily investigated. Furthermore it has been observed that different crystal shapes exist within some areas in the freezing point ternary map. Finally, the use of mathematical models as predictive tools was investigated, and in most instances the model developed was accurate. The outcome of the current study has been used to develop a new visualization technique for the relationship between GTL synthetic paraffinic kerosene's and their building blocks (i.e., paraffinic hydrocarbons). 2013 American Chemical Society.

published proceedings

  • INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY RESEARCH

author list (cited authors)

  • Elmalik, E. E., Raza, B., Warrag, S., Ramadhan, H., Alborzi, E., & Elbashir, N. O.

citation count

  • 15

complete list of authors

  • Elmalik, Elfatih E||Raza, Bilal||Warrag, Samah||Ramadhan, Haider||Alborzi, Ehsan||Elbashir, Nimir O

publication date

  • February 2014