Surrogate fuel formulation for light naphtha combustion in advanced combustion engines

Crude oil once recovered is further separated in to several distinct fractions to produce a range of energy and chemical products. One of the less processed fractions is light naphtha (LN), hence they are more economical to produce than their gasoline and diesel counterparts. Recent efforts have demonstrated usage of LN as transportation fuel for internal combustion engines with slight modifications. In this study, a multicomponent surrogate fuel has been developed for light naphtha fuel using a multi-variable nonlinear constrained optimization scheme. The surrogate, consisting of palette species n-pentane, 2-methylhexane, 2-methylbutane, n-heptane and toluene, was validated against the LN using ignition quality tester following ASTM D6890 methodology. Comparison of LN and the surrogate fuel demonstrated satisfactory agreement.