A newly developed detailed chemical kinetic mechanism, NUIGMech1.1, is used to study the pyrolysis ofC_1 - C_7 hydrocarbons at a constant initial fuel concentration in the temperature range 900-2000 K. Weobserve that, for a given reaction time and pressure, fuel pyrolysis does not occur below a certain “thresholdtemperature”. This phenomenon is explored further in this study by performing rate of productionanalyses for different fuels. It is observed that pyrolysis is highly sensitive to unimolecular dissociationreactions and that the products of unimolecular dissociation determine the secondary fuel consumptionpathways. Furthermore, a minimum progress of reaction factor for the initiation of pyrolysis is establishedfor different fuels over a wide range of residence time (3 ms-30 min) and partial pressure (0.02-2.00 bar) conditions. This limiting factor determines the threshold temperature for the pyrolysis of anyalkane or alkene. A computer program is developed based on this concept to calculate the thresholdtemperature. An application of threshold temperature is also illustrated.
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