Towards Climate Neutral Thermochemical Energy Conversion

Dear Colleagues,

The transformation of the transport sector into a climate-neutral economy is particularly challenging, because for some applications, there are only few alternatives to high-energy-density liquid fuels. Therefore, conventional or new concepts for thermochemical energy conversion in combination with e-fuels will play an important role during the transition phase towards a future, carbon-free energy landscape and beyond. The need for new biogenic, synthetic, carbon-free or carbon-reduced fuels, together with the development of new combustion concepts, poses considerable challenges to the research community. The design and development of new combustion systems requires extensive multi-scale and multi-physics experimental and numerical analysis.

In recent years, several contributions from the community have been published that deal with the fundamental aspects of high-fidelity modelling and experimental characterization of internal combustion engines. The urgent need for the use of carbon-free fuels, such as hydrogen or ammonia, or e-fuels, like methanol, DME or ethanol,  require significant research efforts because all of these fuels have largely different thermo-chemical properties, flame speeds, flame temperatures and flammability limits and are sometimes difficult in terms of emission control. In addition, there is the need to make thermochemical energy conversion more efficient using concepts like RCCI or water injection using two injectors or fuel/water emulsions in combination with carbon-free or synthetic energy careers.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to the fundamental physical understanding and high-fidelity modelling of turbulent combustion using alternative fuels and new energy conversion concepts. Contributions are welcome from specialists with analytical, experimental and numerical backgrounds who are able to provide different perspectives regarding this topic.

Prof. Dr. Markus Klein
Prof. Dr. Nilanjan Chakraborty
Prof. Dr. Christian Trapp
Guest Editors

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