FuelLib

FuelLib (SWR-25-26) utilizes the tables and functions of the Group Contribution Method (GCM) as proposed by Constantinou and Gani (1994) and Constantinou, Gani and O'Connel (1995), with additional physical properties discussed in Govindaraju & Ihme (2016). The code is based on Pavan B. Govindaraju's Matlab implementation of the GCM, and has been expanded to include additional thermodynamic properties and mixture properties. The fuel library contains gas chromatography (GC x GC) data for a variety of fuels ranging from simple single component fuels to complex jet fuels. The GC x GC data for POSF jet fuels comes from Edwards (2020).

Citing this Work

If you use FuelLib in your research, please cite the following software record:

Montgomery, David, Appukuttan, Sreejith, Yellapantula, Shashank, Perry, Bruce, and Binswanger, Adam. FuelLib (Fuel Library) [SWR-25-26]. Computer Software. https://github.com/NREL/FuelLib. USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO). 27 Feb. 2025. Web. doi:10.11578/dc.20250317.1.

Python Environment

The following conda environment is required to run this code:

conda create --name fuellib-env matplotlib pandas scipy black 

Running the Code

This repository includes multiple tutorials of ways to use FuelLib. We recommend starting with the basic tutorial, tutorials/basic.py, which is documented at [https://nrel.github.io/FuelLib/tutorials.html#introduction]. The script tutorials/mixtureProperties.py calculates a given mixture's density, viscosity and vapor pressure from GC x GC data. The results are plotted against data from NIST and Edwards (2020).

Contributing

New contributions are always welcome. If you have an idea for a new feature follow these steps:

1. Fork the main repository
2. Create a newFeature branch that contains your changes
3. Update the sphinx documentation in newFeature
4. Format the source code files using the Black code formatter by running the following command:

   find . -name "*.py" -print0 | xargs -0 black
   

5. Open a Pull Request (PR) from newFeature on your fork to branch main FuelLib repository.

Sphinx Documentation

This repository uses Sphinx to generate documentation. This requires the following Conda environment:

conda create --name sphinx-env sphinx sphinx_rtd_theme sphinxcontrib-bibtex pandas scipy

To view the documentation locally, build the html using the following:

cd FuelLib/docs/
sphinx-build -M html . _build/

You should now be able to view the html by opening FuelLib/docs/_build/html/index.html in a web browser.