Reaction Design

Reaction Design is a San Diego-based developer of combustion simulation software used by engineers to design cleaner burning and fuel-efficient combustors and engines, found in everything from passenger cars to turbines for power generation and aircraft propulsion to large diesels that use pistons the size of rooms to propel ships locomotives. The technology is also used to model spray vaporization in electronic materials processing applications and predict mixing reactions in chemical plants. The company employs a team of chemical and mechanical engineers, and programmers with expertise that spans multi-scale engineering from the molecule to the production plant. Reaction Design serves more than 400 customers in the commercial, government and academic markets.

History

Reaction Design was founded in 1997 by Dr. David H. Klipstein, formerly senior vice president of technology and marketing at Biosym Technologies (now Accelrys). Reaction Design began with a vision of extending the power of kinetic chemistry simulation to industrial markets, enabling industry to replace costly experimental processes with dynamic and precise software-based simulation.

The company was named the exclusive developer and distributor of CHEMKIN®, originally created at the Sandia National Laboratories, in 1997. It is now widely considered the de facto standard for modeling gas-phase and surface chemistry. In 2005 Reaction Design formed the Model Fuels Consortium, uniting automakers, fuel companies and leaders of academia behind shared clean technology goals. The same year, the company hired Bernie Rosenthal, an experienced software executive, to lead the organization forward as its CEO. Milestone product releases include ENERGICO in 2008, and FORTE in 2011.

U.S. Government Contracts

Clean Coal Initiative (2009-): The United States Department of Energy (DOE) selected Reaction Design for a mission to develop the next-generation power plants to support the full-scale implementation and operation of highly efficient coal-based power generation technologies with near-zero emissions. Reaction Design is developing gasification and reaction kinetics simulation software to help solve critical engineering and operating problems that arise throughout the lifecycle of a power plant. The project began in 2009 and is expected to complete in 2012.

FreedomCAR Biofuels Project (2007-2009): Reaction Design led a team of researchers from Chevron and the University of Southern California (USC) in a study of the chemical behavior of biofuels. The team developed and validated detailed chemical mechanisms that govern biofuel combustion and created computer simulation tools aimed at speeding the development process for engine designers and fuel manufacturers as they strive to integrate biofuels into their products. Project funding came from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies (OFCVT) with a mission to develop more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly highway transportation technologies that enable the U.S. to use less petroleum.

NASA Jet Fuels (2007-2010): National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) engaged Reaction Design to develop fuel models for simulating the operation of jet engines with alternative fuels. The project focused on providing needed tools for accurate simulation of combustion of Fischer-Tropsch fuels and biofuels in jet engines, with applications for both commercial and military jet engines. The results provided guidance to the planning and design of optimal fuel-production processes that take advantage of abundant coal and agricultural resources increases U.S. independence from foreign oil.

Model Fuels Consortium

Reaction Design developed the Model Fuels Consortium in 2005 to address the emerging challenges experienced by the automotive and fuel industry. The Consortium is comprised of energy companies, engine manufacturers and academic advisors. Its goal is to enable the design of cleaner-burning, more-efficient engines and fuels by accelerating the development of software tools and databases to streamline and bolster these advances.

MFC (2005-) Members of the first Consortium joined together to advance the development of the necessary chemical models and software tools that enable predictive simulation of efficiency and pollutant emissions for engine technologies that can use both existing petroleum blends and emerging alternative fuels.

Charter members included Chevron, Dow Chemical Company, L'Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Mitsubishi Motors, Nissan, PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Toyota, and academic advisors Chief Technical Advisor Dr. Charlie Westbrook, Prof. Anthony Dean from Colorado School of Mines (formerly of Exxon), Prof. William Green from MIT, Prof. Mitsuo Koshi from University of Tokyo, Prof. Ulrich Maas from Karlsruhe University, and Prof. Hiromitsu Ando from Fukui University, formerly chief executive scientist of Mitsubishi Motors. Charter members were later joined by Conoco-Phillips, Cummins Engine Company, Ford Motor Company, GE Energy, Honda, Mazda, General Motors, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Petrobras, Saudi Aramco, Suzuki and Volkswagen.

Products

FORTE: a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package that enables multi-component surrogate fuel models to work with comprehensive spray fluid dynamics.

ENERGICO: a complex system-design simulation tool for solving gas-turbine engineering problems related to emissions reduction and stability.

CHEMKIN: a simulation tool for basic kinetics simulations that use small or reduced reaction mechanism. Other versions include CHEMKIN-PRO for large chemical simulation applications requiring complex mechanisms; and CHEMKIN-CFD, a plug-in chemistry solver that is linked to CFD software to add accuracy, speed and stability to calculations using multi-step reaction kinetics.

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