Experimental and numerical study of the diethyl ether pyrolysis products in an isothermal jet-stirred reactor

Diethyl ether (DEE) is considered both as a promising alternative fuel and as a pilot fuel that can be used to improve combustion characteristics of, for example, ammonia. Therefore, it is important to systematically study the DEE oxidation and pyrolysis processes. Currently, the number of the studies focused on DEE pyrolysis is very limited in the literature. Moreover, there are also very few results on the verification of the detailed chemical-kinetic mechanisms of the DEE conversion. Therefore, the purpose of the present work was the experimental measurement of the composition of the DEE pyrolysis products, as well as testing the detailed chemical-kinetic mechanisms in order to assess their predictive capability. The DEE pyrolysis in argon environment was studied using an isothermal jet-stirred reactor in the temperature range of 600-1300 K. The composition of the DEE pyrolysis products at different reactor temperatures was determined using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The numerical modeling of the DEE pyrolysis products at different reactor temperatures was performed using CHEMKIN package. In the work, four detailed chemical-kinetic mechanisms earlier described in our publications were tested. It has been shown that the main discrepancies between the experimental and numerical data are observed for CH2O, CH3OH, C4H10, C4H8 and C6H6, which can be important in the combustion of rich DEE fuel mixtures. The main pathways of DEE consumption during pyrolysis were analyzed as well. It was revealed that the submechanism of C6H6 formation and consumption needs further improvement.