MEE411: Applied Thermodynamics

Combustion of fuels - 27/03/2023

To move an airplane or a model rocket through the air, we must use a propulsion system to
generate thrust. Different types of aircraft use different types of propulsion devices, but all
aircraft rely on some type of engine to generate power. Rocket engines, internal combustion,
or piston engines, and jet engines all depend on the burning of fuel to produce power.
Burning a fuel is called combustion, a chemical process that we study in middle or high
school.

Because combustion is so important for aircraft and rocket propulsion, we will review the
fundamentals. Combustion is a chemical process in which a substance reacts rapidly with
oxygen and gives off heat. The original substance is called the fuel, and the source of oxygen
is called the oxidizer. The fuel can be a solid, liquid, or gas, although for airplane propulsion
the fuel is usually a liquid. The oxidizer, likewise, could be a solid, liquid, or gas, but is
usually a gas (air) for airplanes. For model rockets, a solid fuel and oxidizer is used.

During combustion, new chemical substances are created from the fuel and the oxidizer.
These substances are called exhaust. Most of the exhaust comes from chemical combinations
of the fuel and oxygen. When a hydrogen-carbon-based fuel (like gasoline) burns, the
exhaust includes water (hydrogen + oxygen) and carbon dioxide (carbon + oxygen). But the
exhaust can also include chemical combinations from the oxidizer alone. If the gasoline is
burned in air, which contains 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen, the exhaust can also include
nitrous oxides (NOX, nitrogen + oxygen). The temperature of the exhaust is high because of
the heat that is transferred to the exhaust during combustion. Because of the high
temperatures, exhaust usually occurs as a gas, but there can be liquid or solid exhaust
products as well. Soot, for example, is a form of solid exhaust that occurs in some
combustion processes.

During the combustion process, as the fuel and oxidizer are turned into exhaust products,
heat is generated. Interestingly, some source of heat is also necessary to start combustion.
Gasoline and air are both present in your automobile fuel tank; but combustion does not
occur because there is no source of heat. Since heat is both required to start combustion and
is itself a product of combustion, we can see why combustion takes place very rapidly. Also,
once combustion gets started, we don't have to provide the heat source because the heat of
combustion will keep things going. We don't have to keep lighting a campfire, it just keep
burning.

To summarize, for combustion to occur three things must be present: a fuel to be burned, a
source of oxygen, and a source of heat. As a result of combustion, exhausts are created and
heat is released. You can control or stop the combustion process by controlling the amount of
the fuel available, the amount of oxygen available, or the source of heat.

Stoichiometric combustion of a hydrocarbon in oxygen

Generally, the chemical equation for stoichiometric combustion of a hydrocarbon in oxygen

If the stoichiometric combustion takes place using air as the oxygen source,
the nitrogen present in the air (Atmosphere of Earth) can be added to the equation (although
it does not react) to show the stoichiometric composition of the fuel in air and the
composition of the resultant flue gas. Note that treating all non-oxygen components in air as
nitrogen gives a 'nitrogen' to oxygen ratio of 3.77, i.e. (100% - O2%) / O2% where O2% is
20.95% vol:
The Alkane fuels.

Here are the steps to find the stoichiometric ratio of the fuel.

Step 1: Find the chemical equation of the oxidation of the fuel.

Step 2: Balance the equation.

Step 3: Find the molecular weight of fuel and the weight of the oxygen.

Step 4: Find the mass of oxygen: mass of fuel ratio

Step 5: Divide this value by 0.232 as there is only 23.2 percent of oxygen is present in
atmospheric air. This is the value of stoichiometric air-fuel for the particular fuel.
 th

= 17.2
Fuel–air equivalence ratio (ϕ)[edit]
The fuel–air equivalence ratio, ϕ (phi), of a system is defined as the ratio of the fuel-to-oxidizer ratio to the
stoichiometric fuel-to-oxidizer ratio. Mathematically,

where m represents the mass, n represents a number of moles, subscript st stands for
stoichiometric conditions.

The advantage of using equivalence ratio over fuel–oxidizer ratio is that it takes into account
(and is therefore independent of) both mass and molar values for the fuel and the oxidizer.
Consider, for example, a mixture of one mole of ethane (C2H6) and one mole
of oxygen (O2). The fuel–oxidizer ratio of this mixture based on the mass of fuel and air is
 and the fuel-oxidizer ratio of this mixture based on the number of moles of fuel and air is

Example: Calculating the equivalence ratio of methane with fuel and air mass flowrate

Fuel (g/s) Air (g/s) Equivalence Ratio