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Measuring And Predicting Reaction Kinetics For Clean Use Of Biofuels, Phillip R. Westmoreland, Nicole J. Labbe, Wenjun Li, Andrey Pereverzev

Conference on Cellulosic Biofuels

Fuels from renewable biomass already make up part of our energy picture, and that must surely increase. However, relative to petroleum-based fuels, they are thought to generate increased aldehyde and NOx pollutants due to their high content of oxygen and sometimes nitrogen. We are working to explore, explain, and help solve these challenges.

Our two major directions are measuring kinetics with flame molecular-beam mass spectrometry (MBMS) and predicting kinetics using theory, computational quantum chemistry, and our new Reactive Molecular Dynamics methods. We recently built a pioneering MBMS apparatus based on synchrotron VUV-photoionization [Taatjes et al., Science, 308, 1887 (2005)] and …