A new reduced chemical kinetic model for the Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI) combustion of n-heptane in an engine has been developed. The new model is based on two previous reduced kinetic models for alkane oxidation, from which some reactions have been eliminated and with enhanced treatment of the oxidization of CO and CH3O. The kinetic parameters of the key reactions in the new model were adjusted by using a genetic algorithm optimization methodology to improve ignition timings predictions over the range of equivalence ratios from 0.2 to 1.2, temperature from 300 to 3000 K. The final model contains 40 species and 62 reactions and was validated under HCCI engine conditions. The results showed the well-known two-stage ignition characteristics of n-heptane, which involve low and high temperature regimes followed by a branched chain explosion. The optimized reduced model generally agrees well with those of the detailed chemical kinetic model (544 species and 2446 reactions); the computational time of using the former is less 1/1000 that of the latter. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.