Computations of soot formation in ethylene/air counterflow diffusion flames and its interaction with radiation

A methodology is presented which allows to predict soot levels produced in simple, one-dimensional laminar flames. The method is applied to the calculation of a set of well documented ethylene/air counterflow diffusion flames, using a detailed chemical mechanism (Davis et al., 1999 [1]) and a semi-empirical, two-equation soot model from Leung and Lindstedt (1991) [2]. Modifications of the original soot model are made in order to retrieve the experimental measurements of Hwang and Chung (2001) [3]. To account for radiative heat losses, a second series of fully coupled gas/soot/radiation simulations of the counterflow flames is performed. This allows to assess the effect of soot and gas radiation on soot formation and on the flame structure. (C) 2012 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.