Experimental Capabilities
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Advanced Emission Catalysis Capabilities
Provide fuel and catalyst evaluation under various exhaust conditions, including catalyst aging, poisoning, thermal stability, sulfur-tolerance. Advanced capabilities for chemical characterization of catalytic reaction intermediates. Read More
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Catalytic Process Development and Blendstock Production
Researchers have access to a broad range of catalyst design, synthesis and testing capabilities, coupled to batch and flow reactors for small scale process design and bio-blendstock production suitable for making testable quantities. Read More
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Chemical Kinetic Models for New Fuels Blended with Gasoline and Diesel Fuels
Develop chemical kinetic models for fuel components, fuel blends, and surrogate fuels to represent real fuels. These models can be used to simulate autoignition and flame speeds over a wide range of temperatures, pressures, equivalence ratios, and EGR, and be exercised to cover engine-relevant pressure-temperature trajectories. Read More
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Devices for Fuel-Spray Characterization, Including Soot Formation
For research focused on fuel effects on spray development for DI fuel injectors, the research capabilities include constant pressure and constant flow vessels with extensive optical access. These enable a range of diagnostics related to fuel-spray dynamics, fuel-jet autoignition, combustion and soot formation, and how these processes are affected by the fuel. For measurements of fuel effect on in-nozzle and near-nozzle spray development, x-ray imaging offers unique insights. Read More
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Emissions Characterization and Control
Co-Optima researchers have developed unique tools and expertise in real and simulated engine exhaust emissions sampling and characterization, along with catalyst structure and performance characterization. Read More
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Engines for Fuels Research
The development of alternative fuels has to consider fuel effects on engine performance. To this end, the engines used for Co-Optima allow quantifying fuel effects on combustion, real-world efficiency (drive-cycle fuel economy), and compliance with exhaust-emission standards. These research engines can also provide the understanding needed to mitigate implementation barriers to specific high-efficiency technologies, as well as identify synergies between alternative fuels and advanced combustion modes for tomorrow’s engines. Read More
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Experimental Determination of Fundamental Thermophysical Properties and Fuel-Specification Testing of Bio-Derived Blendstocks and Blended Fuels
A wide range of instruments and tools are available to measure the physical properties, chemical composition and speciation, and kinetic behavior of fuels. The fuel properties of both pure components and blended fuels are archived in the Fuel Property Database, which is an open, publicly-accessible platform. Read More
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Feedstock Selection and Formulation
Bench top and pilot scale facilities for process development, scale up and for the production of conversion ready feedstocks from renewable resources, needed in the production of sufficient volumes of biofuels and bioblendstocks for performance characterization. Read More
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Fuel/Oxygenates and Lubricant Interactions
The capability utilizes chemical analytical techniques and enables evaluation of fuel-lubricant interactions to test stability and compatibility of novel lubricants and bio-blendstocks. Read More
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Fully Equipped Organic Synthesis Capabilities
Biofuel and bioblendstock evaluation is enabled by expertise in the design and organic synthesis of candidate biofuels under batch and flow conditions up to 10L scale. Read More