Designer Biosynthetic Jet Fuels appear in new China Lake research

In California, members of the Ben Harvey High-Performance Fuels fan club will applaud the appearance of a most interesting paper on designer jet fuels, these are derived from Isoprene and α-Olefins — what’s most interesting from the gang at the Navy’s China Lake R&D center are some of the net heat and low-temp viscosities of these “designer jet fuelsÆ — keeping in mind that it can get mighty chilly way up in the skies. The authors in the abstract write, “Isoprene was hydrovinylated with a series of α-olefins (1-pentene, 1-hexene, 1-heptene, 1-octene) to produce acyclic branched C10–C13 alkenes. The process utilized CoBr2(DPPE) as the precatalyst in loadings as low as 0.1 mol % and zinc as the reducing agent…The different fuel blends exhibited densities ranging from 0.73 to 0.76 g mL–1, gravimetric net heats of combustion (NHOC) from 43.91 to 44.13 MJ kg–1… In addition to studying the suitability of the lightly branched hydrocarbons generated in this process as jet fuel blendstocks, it was of interest to explore their potential as diesel fuels. The equimolar C10–C13 fuel mixture exhibited a derived cetane number of 56, which is 16 units higher than that required for Diesel #2 (40). The outstanding fuel properties of the isoprene-derived fuels suggest that they have applications as replacements for both petroleum-derived Jet-A and Diesel #2.”

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