@article{wang_natelson_stikeleather_roberts_2013, title={Product sampling during transient continuous countercurrent hydrolysis of canola oil and development of a kinetic model}, volume={58}, ISSN={["1873-4375"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.compchemeng.2013.06.003}, abstractNote={A chemical kinetic model has been developed for the transient stage of the continuous countercurrent hydrolysis of triglycerides to free fatty acids and glycerol. Departure functions and group contribution methods were applied to determine the equilibrium constants of the four reversible reactions in the kinetic model. Continuous countercurrent hydrolysis of canola oil in subcritical water was conducted experimentally in a lab-scale reactor over a range of temperatures and the concentrations of all neutral components were quantified. Several of the rate constants in the model were obtained by modeling this experimental data, with the remaining determined from calculated equilibrium constants. Some reactions not included in the present, or previous, hydrolysis modeling efforts were identified from glycerolysis kinetic studies and may explain the slight discrepancy between model and experiment. The rate constants determined in this paper indicate that diglycerides in the feedstock accelerate the transition from “emulsive hydrolysis” to “rapid hydrolysis”.}, journal={COMPUTERS & CHEMICAL ENGINEERING}, author={Wang, Wei-Cheng and Natelson, Robert H. and Stikeleather, Larry F. and Roberts, William L.}, year={2013}, month={Nov}, pages={144–155} }
 @article{chen_wang_roberts_fang_2013, title={Spray and atomization of diesel fuel and its alternatives from a single-hole injector using a common rail fuel injection system}, volume={103}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84870517496&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1016/j.fuel.2012.08.013}, abstractNote={Fuel spray and atomization characteristics play an important role in the performance of internal combustion engines. As the reserves of petroleum fuel are expected to be depleted within a few decades, finding alternative fuels that are economically viable and sustainable to replace the petroleum fuel has attracted much research attention. In this work, the spray and atomization characteristics were investigated for commercial No. 2 diesel fuel, biodiesel (FAME) derived from waste cooking oil (B100), 20% biodiesel blended diesel fuel (B20), renewable diesel fuel produced in house, and civil aircraft jet fuel (Jet-A). Droplet diameters and particle size distributions were measured by a laser diffraction particle analyzing system and the spray tip penetrations and cone angles were acquired using a high speed imaging technique. All experiments were conducted by employing a common-rail high-pressure fuel injection system with a single-hole nozzle under room temperature and pressure. The experimental results showed that biodiesel and jet fuel had different features compared with diesel. Longer spray tip penetration and larger droplet diameters were observed for B100. The smaller droplet size of the Jet-A were believed to be caused by its relatively lower viscosity and surface tension. B20 showed similar characteristics to diesel but with slightly larger droplet sizes and shorter tip penetration. Renewable diesel fuel showed closer droplet size and spray penetration to Jet-A with both smaller than diesel. As a result, optimizing the trade-off between spray volume and droplet size for different fuels remains a great challenge. However, high-pressure injection helps to optimize the trade-off of spray volume and droplet sizes. Furthermore, it was observed that the smallest droplets were within a region near the injector nozzle tip and grew larger along the axial and radial direction. The variation of droplet diameters became smaller with increasing injection pressure.}, journal={Fuel}, author={Chen, P.-C. and Wang, W.-C. and Roberts, W.L. and Fang, Tiegang}, year={2013}, pages={850–861} }
 @article{wang_roberts_stikeleather_2012, title={Hydrocarbon Fuels From Gas Phase Decarboxylation of Hydrolyzed Free Fatty Acid}, volume={134}, ISSN={["0195-0738"]}, DOI={10.1115/1.4006867}, abstractNote={Gas phase decarboxylation of hydrolyzed free fatty acid (FFA) from canola oil has been investigated in two fix-bed reactors by changing reaction parameters such as temperatures, FFA feed rates, and H2-to-FFA molar ratios. FFA, which contains mostly C18 as well as a few C16, C20, C22, and C24 FFA, was fed into the boiling zone, evaporated, carried by hydrogen flow at the rate of 0.5–20 ml/min, and reacted with the 5% Pd/C catalyst in the reactor. Reactions were conducted atmospherically at 380–450 °C and the products, qualified and quantified through gas chromatography-flame ionization detector (GC-FID), showed mostly n-heptadecane and a few portion of n-C15, n-C19, n-C21, n-C23 as well as some cracking species. Results showed that FFA conversion increased with increasing reaction temperatures but decreased with increasing FFA feed rates and H2-to-FFA molar ratios. The reaction rates were found to decrease with higher temperature and increase with higher H2 flow rates. Highly selective heptadecane was achieved by applying higher temperatures and higher H2-to-FFA molar ratios. From the results, as catalyst loading and FFA feed rate were fixed, an optimal reaction temperature of 415 °C as well as H2-to-FFA molar ratio of 4.16 were presented. These results provided good basis for studying the kinetics of decarboxylation process.}, number={3}, journal={JOURNAL OF ENERGY RESOURCES TECHNOLOGY-TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASME}, author={Wang, Wei-Cheng and Roberts, William L. and Stikeleather, Larry F.}, year={2012}, month={Sep} }
 @article{wang_thapaliya_campos_stikeleather_roberts_2012, title={Hydrocarbon fuels from vegetable oils via hydrolysis and thermo-catalytic decarboxylation}, volume={95}, ISSN={["1873-7153"]}, DOI={10.1016/j.fuel.2011.12.041}, abstractNote={Conversion of canola oil to normal alkane hydrocarbons was investigated using sequential reactions: continuous thermal hydrolysis and fed-batch thermo-catalytic decarboxylation. The free fatty acid (FFA) intermediate product from hydrolysis was quantified using GC–FID, which showed 99.7% conversion and the following components: palmitic, oleic, linoleic, linolenic, stearic, arachidic and behenic acids. The FFA was saturated then decarboxylated at an average rate of 15.5 mmoles/min using a 5% Pd/C catalyst at 300 °C. Approximately 90% decarboxylation conversion to n-alkanes was achieved within 5 h of the reaction. The resulting mixture of n-alkanes can be readily converted into renewable diesel using isomerization to improve the cold flow properties of the fuel.}, number={1}, journal={FUEL}, author={Wang, Wei-Cheng and Thapaliya, Nirajan and Campos, Andrew and Stikeleather, Larry F. and Roberts, William L.}, year={2012}, month={May}, pages={622–629} }
 @article{wang_2012, title={Laboratory investigation of drying process of Illinois coals}, volume={225}, journal={Powder Technology}, author={Wang, W. C.}, year={2012}, pages={72–85} }
 @misc{wang_lin_kuo_wu_2012, title={The relation between dioxin concentration from exhaust gas of diesel engine and chlorine content}, volume={94}, journal={Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis}, author={Wang, W. C. and Lin, W. H. and Kuo, C. P. and Wu, J. Y.}, year={2012}, pages={10–16} }