SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Reaction Design®, the leading developer of combustion simulation software, introduced the industry’s most well validated available Model Fuel Library, the result of seven years of research and validation under the Model Fuels Consortium whose members include Toyota, GE Energy, VW, Suzuki, Petrobras and Conoco. The Model Fuel Library is a subscription-based library which includes more than 40 fully validated, self-consistent components that can be used to simulate fuel effects in virtually all types of automotive and aircraft engines, as well as engines used for electric power generation. The components can be combined to model a large variety of new or existing fuel blends.
“The automotive industry has historically relied on experimentation and measurement as a means of understanding emissions, but such an empirical approach is costly, time-consuming and provides limited insight into new designs or operating conditions,” said Bernie Rosenthal, CEO of Reaction Design. “Reaction Design has aggregated decades of combustion kinetics research to build a database of chemically accurate fuel component models that can be used to help reduce the time and costs of developing cleaner burning fuels and engines. Simulation and modeling have proven to speed time to market and improve product performance in many other industries, such as electronics and medicine. The combustion industry can now better harness the power of computational computing in R&D and look to reap similar benefits.”
The Model Fuel Library provides a set of accurate models for real-fuel components that enables engine designers to develop low emission, high efficiency engines in a more timely and cost-effective manner. Further, subscribers will have the ability to target a fuel model for specific application and simulation goals such as ignition, flame propagation, or emissions of NOx, CO and soot/particulate matter (PM) emission rates.
While the Model Fuel Library can be used with many commercial simulation packages, most have limited kinetics capabilities and may not be able to take full advantage of the library. Reaction Design’s ENERGICO, FORTÉ and CHEMKIN-PRO products include the most advanced kinetic solvers in the industry and can therefore maximize the utility of the Model Fuel Library components. Using the CHEMKIN-PRO Reaction Workbench, fuel component models from the Model Fuel Library can be blended to create surrogate fuel representations that match the behavior of “real” fuels. Reaction Workbench can then be used to intelligently reduce the fuel model complexity in line with the simulation goals and the package to be used.
“By creating the Model Fuel Library, Reaction Design has furthered its commitment to empowering engineers to simulate real world applications for automotive and combustion engines, helping address fundamental fuel efficiency and pollution reduction challenges,” said Ellen Meeks, vice president of product development at Reaction Design.
About the Model Fuels Consortium
Reaction Design developed the Model Fuels Consortium in 2005 to address the emerging challenges experienced by the automotive and fuel industry. The Consortium is composed of energy companies and engine manufacturers, with technical guidance from academic advisors. Its goal is to enable the design of cleaner-burning, more-efficient engines and fuels by accelerating the development of software tools and databases to streamline and bolster these advances. Members include, GE Energy, L’Institut Français du Pétrol Energie Nouvelles (IFPEN), Mazda, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Petrobras, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Suzuki, Toyota, and Volkswagen.
With the MFC coming to an end in Dec. 2012, Reaction Design is continuing the research and assembly of the most complete and accurate fuel mechanisms available today through the Model Fuel Library subscription service.
Price and Availability
Several packages to the Model Fuels Library are available starting at $200,000; information about additional pricing configurations is available upon request. To receive more information about gaining access to the Online Model Fuel Library, contact sales@reactiondesign.com.
About Reaction Design
Reaction Design, a San Diego, California-based software supplier, enables transportation manufacturers and energy companies to rapidly achieve their clean technology goals by automating the analysis of chemical processes via computer simulation and modeling solutions.
Reaction Design is the exclusive developer and distributor of CHEMKIN and CHEMKIN-PRO, the de facto standard for modeling gas-phase and surface chemistry that provides engineers ultra-fast access to reliable answers that save time and money in the development process. Reaction Design’s FORTÉ simulation software is an advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation package for realistic 3D modeling of fuel effects in internal combustion engines with superior time-to-solution metrics that fit in commercial development timeframes. Reaction Design’s ENERGICO software brings accurate chemistry simulation to gas turbine and boiler/furnace combustion systems using automated reactor network analysis. Reaction Design also offers the CHEMKIN-CFD software module, which brings detailed kinetics modeling to other engineering applications, such as CFD packages.
Reaction Design’s world-class engineers, chemists and programmers have expertise that spans multi-scale engineering from the molecule to the production plant. Reaction Design serves more than 400 customers in the commercial, government and academic markets.
Reaction Design can be found online at www.reactiondesign.com.
CHEMKIN®, CHEMKIN-PRO® and Reaction Design® are registered trademarks of Reaction Design. FORTÉ, ENERGICO, CHEMKIN-CFD and Model Fuels Consortium are trademarks of Reaction Design. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.