A reduced chemical reaction mechanism was developed for modeling the combustion process and soot
emissions for both non-oxygenated and oxygenated hydrocarbon fuels. A detailed poly-aromatic hydrocarbon
(PAH) mechanism was reduced and embedded into a reduced n-heptane mechanism for describing
the formation of PAH up to four rings (A4) and for soot prediction. A reduced n-butanol mechanism
was combined with the n-heptane-PAH mechanism to investigate of effects of oxygenated n-butanol
fuels on combustion and soot emissions. The final mechanism consists of 76 species and 349 reactions.
The mechanism was validated with experiments in shock tubes, constant volume chambers and testbed
engine data. New experiments were also conducted and reported in current investigation and have
been used to validate the proposed mechanism. The effects of oxygenated additives on combustion and
soot emissions under diesel-like conditions were also investigated. The results show that the present
simulations give reliable predictions of combustion and soot emissions. The results also agree with the
general soot formation processes near the lift-off length in mixing controlled diesel fuel jets, and the
present mechanism can be used to predict the combustion and soot emissions of diesel, n-heptane and
n-butanol fuels in 3D CFD simulations.