Recent Developments in Power and Propulsion Applications

The primary focus of this contributed volume is on providing cutting-edge developments in a number of critically important fields, including energy, combustion, power, propulsion, environment using fossil fuels, and the production and use of biofuels. The availability of clean and sustainable energy is more crucial now than ever before for all areas of energy use in power, mobility, and propulsion. In the future, the energy used will only grow due to the increase in population and enhanced standards of living.  This book includes contributions from globally recognized specialists from various regions of the world. They have provided the most recent advances in both basic and applied research on the creation of cleaner energy and its application for a variety of technologies, from microscale energy conversion to supersonic and hypersonic propulsion powered by hydrocarbon fuels. Clean and efficient energy conversion for various stationary and propulsion applications, including hypersonic propulsion, thermal management, emission control, and environmental issues for energy sustainability, are amongst the challenges and opportunities followed for the specific applications. In parallel, some of the other applications include the combustion of fossil and biofuels, clean energy production from low-grade materials such as waste and biomass, and alternative fuels via rigorous modeling and simulation, with a focus on efficiency and environmental issues. The present and future R&D activities include specially designed technical tracks and contributions from internationally recognized technical experts that reveal different but complementary viewpoints on fuels, combustion, power and propulsion, and air toxins. The development and implementation of novel energy conversion technologies require solid fundamental understanding, as well as research and development efforts at different scales, from bench to pilot to full scale. We conjecture that for the foreseeable future, hydrocarbon fuels will likely remain a major source of energy in all sectors of power, transportation, and propulsion, with a slow but steady increase in renewable energy resources in the overall energy mix. A multifaceted strategy is needed for the energy and environmental sustainability of all power and propulsion systems. This includes creating and utilizing alternative and renewable fuels, designing flexible fuel combustion systems that are simple to use with the new fuels, and developing cutting-edge, eco-friendly technologies to maximize the use of all types of gas, liquid, and solid fuels.

This book provides a wealth of knowledge as a reference for practicing engineers, research engineers, researchers and managers in labs and industry, academic institutions, graduate students, and senior-year undergraduates studying mechanical, chemical, aerospace, energy, and environmental and industrial engineering.

Dr. Ashoke De is a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He received his MS from IIT Kanpur, and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University, USA. Before joining IIT Kanpur, he worked as a post-doctoral scholar at the Technical University of Delft (TU-Delft), Netherlands and as a Research Engineer at GE Global research in Bangalore, India. He is the recipient of the DAAD Fellowship (2016), IEI-Young Engineer’s Award-2014 (Aerospace Engineering), Early Career Research award-2015 (DST, India), Expertise Award-2010 (GE Global research), and P K Kelkar Young Research Fellowship (2015-2018, IITK). He is an ASME Fellow, AvHumboldt Fellow, AIAA Associate Fellow, Fellow of West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology, Associate Editor for the International Journal of Energy for a Clean Environment (2019-present), and currently serves as a member of APS, AIAA, ASME, SIAM, FMFP, ISHMT and Combustion Institute. He is currently leading several large-scale initiatives in the modelling of turbulent flows at IIT Kanpur. Dr. De has authored over 200 papers (journals and conferences), and has edited several books. His current research interests include multiphase modeling, Computational Aeroacoustics, hypersonic flows, Energy Harvesting and Fluid-Structure interactions (FSI).

Dr. Ashwani K. Gupta is a Distinguished University Professor and Minta Martin Professor of Engineering at the University of Maryland (UMD), USA. He obtained his Ph.D. and higher doctorate (D.Sc) from the University of Sheffield, UK. He was awarded D.Sc. from Southampton University, UK, and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, USA, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand, and the University of Derby, UK. He received the President Kirwan Research Award and College of Engineering Research Award at UMD. His research interests include Combustion, Swirl flows, High temperature air combustion, High intensity distributed combustion, Industrial furnaces, Diagnostics, Fuel spray, Fuel reforming, Sensors, Micro-scale combustion, Wastes to clean energy via pyrolysis and gasification, Biofuels, Air pollution, Under water propulsion, and Sulfur chemistry and recovery from acid gas, High intensity gas turbine combustion, and Hypersonics.  He has received several honors and awards from AIAA and ASME, and has co-authored over 900 papers and several books, in the areas of combustion, swirl flows, high temperature air combustion (HiTAC), distributed combustion, green combustion turbine, gas turbines, wastes to energy, acid gas treatment, fuel reforming, biofuels, laser diagnostics, hypersonics, and air pollution. He was awarded 2025 Thermal and Fluids Engineering award by American Society of Thermal and fluids (ASTFE).  He is the Editor-in-chief of the Intl. journal of energy for a clean environment and Associate Editor of the J. Propulsion and Power.  He is an Honorary Fellow of ASME and RAeS (UK), and Fellow of AIAA, SAE, ASTF, and AAAS, and Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA).  His current research interests include combustion, waste-to-energy, biofuels, hyper sonics and laser diagnostics.

Dr. Akshai K. Runchal is an expert in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and numerical simulation of flow, heat and mass transport processes in engineering and environmental sciences. In the late 1960s, under the guidance of Prof. D. B. Spalding at the Imperial College London, Dr. Runchal and Dr. Wolfshtein developed the Finite Volume Method (FVM) for CFD applications. His expertise spans a broad spectrum of aerospace chemical, mechanical, civil and environmental engineering projects. Additionally, he has consulted extensively on projects in the fields of environmental impact, management of air, surface and ground water resources, safe disposal of hazardous and nuclear waste, and, policy and decision analysis. Dr. Runchal received his Ph.D. from the Imperial College London (UK) in 1969 and a Bachelor of Engineering with Honors from Punjab Engineering College (Chandigarh, India) in 1964. He has taught and guided research students at UCLA, Cal Tech, CSU (Northridge), Imperial College London, and IIT (Kanpur). He is the author or co-author of multiple books and over 200 technical publications. He has delivered keynote and invited talks at more than a 100 conferences and seminars in the USA, the UK, France, Germany, India, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Croatia, Czechoslovakia and Slovenia.

Dr. Dibakar Rakshit is a Professor at the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. He received his MS from IIT Madras and Ph.D. from the University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Before joining IIT Delhi, heworked as a Research Fellow at CSIRO, Australia, and as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Curtin University, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers and is currently a member of ISHMT, FMFP, ISHARE, and IEI. He is also a visiting Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore and NCUT Taiwan. His research interests lie in thermofluid-based design and optimization of multi-vector energy systems, specifically in energy storage. His research work in the above areas has resulted in around 130 journal publications, multiple refereed conference papers, several book chapters. He has supervised various Ph.D. and Master theses in allied areas of energy science and engineering.

Dr. Abhijit Kushari is a Professor at the Department of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India. Dr. Kushari received his Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, in 2000 and joined IIT Kanpur as an Assistant Professor in 2001. He became a Professor in 2014. His research interests include Aerospace Propulsion, Gas Turbine engines, Turbo-machinery, Liquid Atomization Flow Control and Combustion Dynamics. He has authored more than 130 technical papers. He has supervised several Ph.D. and M.Tech. theses in Aerospace Propulsion fields.