Experiments - Combustion

[karl.y]

I'm looking into factors affecting combustion and the efficiency of different fuels and i need help with some experimental ideas relating to this topic. Any thoughts or ideas would be much appreciated.

[deleted-71588]

Have you had chemistry yet?
1) What is the latent heat of fission for the fuel and all its components?
2) What is the temperature of the fuel and air pre-combustion?
3) What are the contaminants / constituents and how are they separated in the process?
4) How much combustion air is required per BTU produced?
5) How much fuel mass is required per BTU produced?
6) What heat recovery methods are used to remove heat from the exhaust stream?
7) What corrosive aspects of the reactants and combustion products will interact with the combustion / exhaust containment?
8) What are the no-combustable waste products and where do they end up?
9) What is required to minimize pollutants in the combustion products?
10) Are there variations in the fuel source that affect any of the above?

I'm sure there are probably 10 to 50 more factors that others can come up with quickly.

Different kinds of fuels often require different combustion equipment to obtain maximum efficiency so these kinds of comparisons are not easily done absent some use criterion. In other words, if you take a simple hot water boiler heating system, the range of fuels that can be evaluated is fairly wide. If you take an internal combustion engine, the amount of tuning required to accomodate a given fuel is significant.

[karl.y]

Thx craig. No I haven't had chem yet, we're doing biology and genetics in science right now.

How would I go about actually testing some of those & what equipment would i need?

[deleted-71588]

Given that you haven't had chemistry yet (where you should learn some useful techniques), I'm not sure how best to guide you other than you are going to have to do more online research into what others have done in similar projects and read up on the physical chemistry aspects of combustion. This is one of those open ended areas that you can get as deep technically as you care to or attempt to stay as high level as you can. Hopefully another expert will have some ideas that will spark an interest in some subarea.