This award supports the second MACCCR Fuels Summit meeting taking place on September 15-17, 2009, at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, California. The 2009 MACCCR meeting follows a very successful meeting that took place in September of 2008 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The Multi-Agency Coordinating Committee on Combustion Research (MACCCR) is an informal group of program managers within the Federal Government. It serves to coordinate joint initiatives and to inform the group members of each other's activities.
The Fuels Summit focuses attention on scientific understanding of conventional fuels, surrogates, and their property-performance characteristics. The intellectual merit of this activity arises from the participation of fuel-science and combustion-science experts from across the United States and from various countries, dissemination of their technical findings, their communications with each other, and their visions of future research directions. Invited speakers will present research activities and results that relate to the development of science that controls the burning of single-component as well as practical fuels. Two components are Department of Defense Multi-University Research Initiative (MURI) teams, who are focused on characterization of combustion properties of petroleum-derived and synthetic jet fuels and their surrogates.
Societal and technological needs will be addressed by the outcomes of the conference, especially timely because of the ongoing energy challenges and the need of the country to move forward with new energy conversion technologies that are more scientifically based more on science. The conference will also promote international, multi-disciplinary collaboration and communication. Outcomes of this meeting will also serve as a useful guide for setting priorities of the NSF Combustion, Fire, and Plasma Systems Program.