San Diego, CA – September 15, 2008 – Reaction Design, the clean technology chemistry leader, today announced the establishment of the Model Fuels Consortium II (“MFC-II”).  The MFC-II is the second generation of a highly-regarded project for the development of cleaner burning, higher-mileage vehicles.

“As the cost of engine fuels continues to rise and the need to meet tightening emissions specifications drives the need for more sophisticated design methods, close collaboration among fuel and auto industry leaders is essential.  The MFC-II provides a forum for this collaboration, enabling continued development of tools, fundamental combustion data and models that help solve fuel-efficiency and pollution-reduction challenges,” said Bernie Rosenthal, CEO of Reaction Design.

The goal of the MFC-II is to create software models and tools that let engine designers predict and control soot particle size and number.  Nano-particles are increasingly being linked to various medical conditions from asthma to pulmonary fibrosis.  New and proposed regulations would limit the number and size of these particles that an engine can produce. However, without proactive engine design changes, these regulations would significantly increase the cost of automotive after-treatment systems.

"The ability to accurately simulate particulate emissions in a virtual environment has a significant impact on engine development cycles," said Shigeo Furuno, General Manager, Power Train Engineering, Toyota Motor Corporation.  "We expect the MFC-II will provide us with the necessary models and tools to predict the sooting tendencies of different combustion conditions. In the end, this can save weeks or months of development time versus using only physical prototype tests."

Building on the very successful surrogate modeling strategy of the original MFC, the new consortium effort will continue to expand the “members-only” combustion fuels database to refine precision and add new fuel types, as new trends require.  This database provides the cornerstone intellectual property for accurate combustion simulation and soot prediction.  With the growing importance of diesel fuels, further development of science-based soot models, with a special emphasis on particle size distribution, will be pursued.  In addition, the mechanism-reduction techniques developed in the original project will be further enhanced to meet demands for faster, more precise model generation.

"Working with the MFC-II gives us access to data and software tools that we can use to create new cleaner-burning fuels and respond to anticipated changes in transportation fuel requirements," said Garry Gunter, Senior Engineer, ConocoPhillips Company.  "By uniting key players from the auto and energy industries, the MFC-II provides an important forum for clean-fuel development and analysis."

Charter Members and Advisors
Charter Members for the MFC-II include: ConocoPhillips, Mazda, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Saudi Aramco, Suzuki, and Toyota.  In addition to the active contributions from these members, the MFC-II effort will continue to benefit from the active participation and guidance of a technical advisory committee including chief technical advisor, Dr. Charlie Westbrook, widely regarded as one of the pioneers of combustion modeling, together with Prof. Anthony Dean, Colorado School of Mines; Prof. William Green, MIT; Prof. Hiromitsu Ando, Fukui University; Prof. Mitsuo Koshi, University of Tokyo; Prof. Ulrich Maas, Karlsruhe University; and Prof. Rolf Reitz, University of Wisconsin.

For more information on the MFC-II, please visit www.reactiondesign.com.

About Reaction Design
Reaction Design, a San Diego-based software supplier, enables transportation manufacturers and energy companies to rapidly achieve their Clean Technology goals by automating the analysis of chemical processes via computer simulation and modeling solutions.  Reaction Design is the exclusive developer and distributor of CHEMKIN and CHEMKIN-PRO, the de facto standards for modeling gas-phase and surface chemistry, providing engineers ultra-fast access to reliable answers that save time and money in the Development process.  Reaction Design also offers the CHEMKIN-CFD software package, which brings detailed kinetics modeling to other engineering applications, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) programs.  Reaction Design’s world-class engineers, chemists and programmers have 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.

Reaction Design can be found online at www.reactiondesign.com.

CHEMKIN® and Reaction Design® are registered trademarks of Reaction Design. ENERGICO, CHEMKIN-PRO, CHEMKIN-CFD and Model Fuels Consortium are trademarks of Reaction Design.

Read more about the Model Fuels Consortium II