Ammonia as fuel to decarbonize thermal applications from engine to industrial burner

Keynote abstract: The goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is accelerating the energy transition. Industries and researchers are working together to develop zero-CO₂ emission solutions across power, transport, and industry. Hydrogen and its derivatives, known as e-fuels, will play a key role. Among them, ammonia—one simple electro-fuel—is a promising energy and hydrogen carrier that can also be used directly as a zero-carbon fuel, alone or blended with hydrogen or biofuels. However, its combustion properties differ significantly from conventional fuels and remain underexplored. During this seminar, the state of the art in ammonia combustion and some examples of applications as internal combustion engines, gas turbine and industrial burners will be presented and discussed to highlight key challenges

Bio: Christine Rousselle has been a professor at the University of Orléans (Laboratoire PRISME) since 2006 after a PhD in Energy and Mechanical Engineering obtained in 1993. She is a member of the Scientific Council of IFPen and of several advisory boards (since 2022: member of the MariNH3 International Advisory Board (UK program), since 2021: member of the International Advisory Board CMT – UPV (Valencia, Spain)). In 2023, she was Chair and President of the Organising Committee of the 2nd Symposium on Ammonia Energy and member of the organising committee ‘TOTeM49 – IFRF, Chemical energy carriers for long-term storage and long-distance transport of renewable energies. Since 2022: Technical Committee of ‘1st and 2nd Ammonia Combustion Meetings and since 2021: Advisory and Scientific Committee of THIESEL and SAE-Naples Capri conferences). She is also ambassador for France of ASME-ICEF since 2024.’

She is a Fellow (2021) of the Combustion Institute. She is co-editor of Proceeding of Combustion Institute of Journal of Ammonia Energy and member of the board of the Combustion Institute.

Her main research fields are: fundamental combustion to applications, new combustion modes (lean burn, LTC, RCCI…), low and zero carbon-fields (ammonia, alcohol, optical diagnostics, engines). She leads several projects related to ammonia fuels, mainly for engine applications, with fundamental improvements on combustion processes and recently to decarbonize industrial furnaces. She obtained in 2024 the status of Senior Member of Institut Universitaire de France for 5 years to dedicate most of her academic time in research focused on Ammonia combustion.

Exascale computing and data science towards utilization of alternative fuels for transportation and power

Keynote abstract: Providing alternative energy for transportation and power generation is critical as demand for baseload energy continues to increase. Dispatchable energy generation with a lower carbon footprint will require innovative fuels from different feedstocks and the development of energy technologies for their efficient utilization while reducing harmful emissions. High performance computing at the exascale has enabled first principles direct numerical simulation to address many of the challenges associated with combustion of alternative fuels. In this presentation, first, DNS of the turbulent burning rate of hydrogen and hydrogen/ammonia blends with increasing pressure will be discussed along with a rich-quench-lean (RQL) strategy to mitigate NO and N2O emissions. Second, DNS of flame stabilization utilizing sustainable aviation fuels in a laboratory-scale aeroengine combustor will be discussed.

To reduce the computational cost of DNS of turbulent combustion with detailed chemistry, reduced order surrogate models (ROMS) for chemical species dimension reduction on-the-fly will be described. In particular, recent results obtained with scalable rank adaptive ROM with time-dependent bases will be presented.

Bio: Jacqueline H. Chen is a Senior Scientist at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories. She has contributed broadly to research in turbulent combustion elucidating ‘turbulence-chemistry’ interactions in combustion through direct numerical simulations. To achieve scalable performance of DNS on heterogeneous computer architectures she led an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, applied mathematicians and computational scientists to develop an exascale direct numerical simulation capability for turbulent reactive flows with complex chemistry and multi-physics. She has also contributed to reduced order modeling to accelerate DNS with complex chemistry. She is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Combustion Institute and the American Physical Society. She is an Associate Fellow of the AIAA.

Optical diagnostics for combustion and reacting flows

Keynote abstract: This lecture will cover principles of optical diagnostics and reacting flows, with a focus on understanding how to select appropriate measurements for the questions to be answered. The lecture will cover the fundamentals of optical diagnostics and their uses, including those appropriate for velocity (particle image velocimetry, laser doppler anemometry) and species measurements. Among the latter, we will discuss line of sight absorption, Raman and coherent Raman measurements, with references on emerging techniques for non-linear spectroscopy, laser-induced incandescence and laser-induced grating spectroscopy.

Bio: Simone Hochgreb is a Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interests are in understanding processes in combustion and reacting flows, as relevant to power conversion and industrial processes. She has co-authored around 200 journal publications in engine and gas turbine combustion, reacting flows, measurement methods and thermoacoustics.

Her recent interests are in the application of optical diagnostics to the measurements of temperatures and species in turbulent flames, hydrogen combustion, thermoacoustics, aerosols and flame synthesis. She is a Fellow of the Combustion Institute, and of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and Distinguished Fellow of the International Institute of Acoustics and Vibration.

She holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of São Paulo, and a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

Bio: Prof. Mario Eduardo Santos Martins, PhD, is an associate professor at the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, where he conducts teaching and research activities, being the leader of the Engines, Fuels and Emissions Research Group. His industrial experience includes companies such as Sygma Motors and Volkswagen Trucks and Buses of Brazil.

He is a Mechanical Engineer Graduate, with a PhD in Combustion Engines obtained at Brunel University, West London. His research activities include alternative fuels and novel combustion modes, HCCI, RCCI, engine testing and simulation, as well as development and design of new engine concepts. He has published more than 80 technical papers and has been granted various projects from industry and founding agencies.



 

Ignition and burning of wooden structures exposed to flames and firebrands

Bio: Felipe Centeno has been an Assistant Professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS / Brazil) since 2015. He obtained his PhD from the same university in 2014 and he was a visiting researcher at the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre (The University of Edinburgh) in 2019. His research interests span from fundamental studies to applied engineering, focusing on fire safety and science related to compartment fires, building fires, urban fires, industrial fires, wildland fires, and wildland-urban-interface (WUI) fires. Prof. Centeno utilizes theoretical, experimental and computational methods in his research.