Soot aggregate morphology deduced from thermophoretic sampling in coflow laminar methane diffusion flames at pressures up to 30 bar

Abstract

A high pressure combustion chamber, housing a co-flow burner and a novel thermophoretic soot sampling system, was used to collect soot samples from methane-air diffusion flames at pressures from 5 bar to 30 bar. To have tractable diffusion flames with the same residence times, constant methane flow rate of 0.55 mg/s was maintained throughout the experiments. Soot aggregates were collected on 3 mm diameter transmission electron microscope (TEM) grids and the images of the soot aggregates were captured by a TEM device. Sampling was done at three heights above the burner rim at 3, 6, and 8 mm. An automated image processing method was used to analyze the TEM images of soot aggregates to infer the primary soot particle diameters and the aggregate morphology. The mean primary soot particle diameters increased from 5 to 15 bar at all three sampling locations and seemed to reach a peak around 15–20 bar at 6 and 8 mm height and start decreasing with further increase in pressure. On the other hand, mean primary soot diameter at 3 mm height increased slightly beyond 15 bar. In view of the measured soot concentrations and temperatures at the sampling locations at 3, 6, and 8 mm above the burner, the soot number density is argued to be increasing with increasing pressure. Throughout the all experimental conditions, fractal dimension of the aggregates in these methane diffusion flames did not exceed 1.4 which is much smaller than the accepted universal value of about 1.85. Morphological characteristics inferred from TEM images indicate that the aggregation is less prominent in methane flames in comparison to ethylene diffusion flames under similar conditions.