Selected papers about chemiluminescence of flames

Abstract

Sensors that allow cheap, reliable and non-intrusive monitoring and subsequent active control of combustion processes are necessary for the development of combustors operating under potentially unstable operation conditions (e.g., for very lean or low-temperature combustion). Chemiluminescence in the UV-Vis region fulfills all of these requirements, and it has been shown that it can be used to determine flame parameters such as stoichiometry and heat release quantitatively. However, even though flame emissions have been studied for more than one century, important facts still remain unknown. Especially, reaction pathways leading to chemiluminescent species such as OH∗, CH∗, C∗2 and CO ∗ 2 are still under debate and cannot be modeled with standard codes for flame simulation. In several cases, even the source species of spectral features observed in flames are unknown. To investigate these processes in more detail, the cooperative research project “Chemiluminescence and Heat Release” has been started in 2006 with support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under contract PAK 116. Seven individual projects, contributions from nine groups and institutions including the IWR and PCI at Heidelberg University, DLR Stuttgart, IVG of University of Duisburg– Essen, PC1 at Bielefeld University, EKT at TU Darmstadt, PTB Braunschweig, TCP at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and LTD at TU Munchen. The project has been very