Determination of Soot Particle Size in a Premixed Flame: a Static and Dynamic Light Scattering Study

In this contribution we report upon our static and dynamic light scattering experiments to characterize soot particles in flames. We studied sooting laminar premixed flame with acetylene as fuel mixed with air as oxidizer. The air equivalence ratio of the combustion was larger than one. We used a Kaskan type burner with circular geometry and a stabilizing flow of nitrogen around the flame. We focused on the determination of the size of the soot particles in the center of the flame as a function of height above burner. In addition we investigated the influence of the mixing ratio of the gases on the size of the particles. Our results show that static light scattering is better suited than dynamic light scattering for a fast and reliable characterization of soot particles in flames. The latter needs detailed a priori information about the flame to allow the unique determination of sizes from the diffusion measurements. The soot particles grow monotonously with height above burner and with decreasing air equivalence ratio. The aggregates have a fractal dimension lower than two.