Publications Details
In situ measurement of particle formation in heated jet fuels. A new application of photon correlation spectroscopy
The high-temperature stability of current and proposed aviation fuels is a major factor in the design of advanced technology aircraft engines. Efforts to develop highly stable formulations and thereby mitigate fouling problems in aircraft fuel system components would clearly benefit from a predictive model that describes the important parameters in thermally induced degradation of the liquid fuel as well as the deposition of solid species. To generate such a model, diagnostic tools are needed to characterize adequately fluid dynamics, heat transfer, mass transfer and complex chemical processes that occur in thermally stressed fuels. In this paper, the authors describe preliminary results in the use of a dynamic light scattering technique, photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS), to address one aspect of the fuel stability problem; i.e., incipient particle formation and subsequent growth in mean particle size as a function of tempreture, exposure time, degree of oxidation, etc.