UBCO researchers cook up cleaner jet fuel using nanomaterials

Photo: UBCO

UBCO researcher Sepehr Mosadegh tests the ignition delay and burn rate of fuel mixed with graphene oxide with the hopes of creating a greener, but more powerful, aircraft fuel.

A team of UBC Okanagan researchers is trying to create cleaner fuel for aircraft engines using nanomaterials to help reduce their carbon footprint.

The goal is to produce, clean-burning, power-boosting aircraft fuel by studying the burning rate of nanomaterials in liquid fuels.

The project is a collaboration between the School of Engineering’s Combustion for Propulsion and Power Laboratory and its Nanomaterials and Polymer Nanocomposites Laboratory. The team is investigating the combustion characteristics of microscopic graphene oxide inside fuel.

The experiments measure the ignition delay, burn rate and speed by which the graphene particles and fuel separate into smaller particles.

“Working with our industry partner, ZEN Graphene Solutions, we are assessing how the burn rate of this mixture can potentially improve its combustion properties,” explains lead author and doctoral student Sepehr Mosadegh.

Mosadegh and his supervisor, assistant professor Dr. Sina Kheirkhah, develop technology, tools and knowledge for next-generation energy and aerospace-related applications. This project is designed to lead to a future of cleaner and more powerful aircraft.

“When it comes to fuel, we are always searching for a consistent response of the fuel within key parameters as they relate to how it ignites, burns and maintains strength,” says Mosadegh. “Most people have a general understanding of the composition of gasoline and jet fuel, and that it is a mixture of many hydrocarbons. But they may not think about how combining these with nanomaterials and burning them can result in dramatically more powerful and cleaner engines.”

Researchers found that the addition of graphene oxide nanomaterials into ethanol improved the burn rate by about eight per cent. It may not sound like much but even that improvement can help reduce the carbon footprint of aircraft and make aircraft engines more powerful.

“The recipe for cooking the nanomaterials was developed by the co-author of this study Ahmad Ghaffarkhah, who works in our partner lab,” says Dr. Kheirkhah. “We have published the results for doped ethanol, and we have promising results for other liquid fuels such as jet A and diesel.”