The Reacting Gas Dynamics Laboratory (RGD) is a research facility at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

.

The RGD researches methods for deriving high-efficiency, low-carbon energy from hydrocarbon

Hydrocarbon

In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons from which one hydrogen atom has been removed are functional groups, called hydrocarbyls....

 sources or hybrizided with concentrated solar thermal energy through thermochemical conversion and combustion

Combustion

Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame...

. The RGD receives funding from a number of sources both public and private. These include the U.S. Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research

Office of Naval Research

The Office of Naval Research , headquartered in Arlington, Virginia , is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S...

, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, BP

BP

BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

, ENEL

Enel

Enel may refer to:*Enel SpA, an Italian electricity company*Enel , a fictional villain in the One Piece manga and anime series*Enel, meaning third in the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, cf. Awakening of the Elves...

, Bosch GmbH

Robert Bosch GmbH

Robert Bosch GmbH is a multinational engineering and electronics company headquartered in Gerlingen, near Stuttgart, Germany. It is the world's largest supplier of automotive components...

, and the Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

. The lab also is in collaborations with the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals

King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals is a public university in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia....

, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is a public research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.KAUST was founded in 2009 and focuses exclusively on graduate education and research, using English as the official language of instruction...

, and Masdar

Masdar

Masdar may refer to:*the Arabic verbal noun*Masdar City, Masdar, planned city in Abu Dhabi*Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a university in Abu Dhabi*Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company...

 in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi , literally Father of Gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates in terms of population and the largest of the seven member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi lies on a T-shaped island jutting into the Persian Gulf from the central western...

, as well as other departments and faculty within MIT.

Specifically, the lab develops, validates and applies simulation

Simulation

Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....

 techniques, from the submicron scale to full system scale

Full scale

In electronics and signal processing, full scale or full code represents the maximum amplitude a system can present.-Electronics and signal processing:...

, to engineer low-CO2 energy systems. Examples of the simulation work include studies of thermoacoustic instability and multiphysics multiscale simulations of entrained flow gasification

Gasification

Gasification is a process that converts organic or fossil based carbonaceous materials into carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane. This is achieved by reacting the material at high temperatures , without combustion, with a controlled amount of oxygen and/or steam...

. These simulations are supported by high-performance computing

High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.-Overview:...

 systems and high-resolution optical diagnostics. The long-term goals of the lab include innovation in clean combustion for propulsion and power, gasification for power and biofuel

Biofuel

Biofuel is a type of fuel whose energy is derived from biological carbon fixation. Biofuels include fuels derived from biomass conversion, as well as solid biomass, liquid fuels and various biogases...

 production, and oxycombustion and electrochemical

Electrochemical cell

An electrochemical cell is a device capable of either deriving electrical energy from chemical reactions, or facilitating chemical reactions through the introduction of electrical energy. A common example of an electrochemical cell is a standard 1.5-volt "battery"...

/thermochemical conversion in ion transport membrane reactors and high-temperature fuel cells.

The chief faculty director of the laboratory is Dr. Ahmed Ghoniem of MIT's Mechanical Engineering Department.