Investigation of the size of the incandescent incipient soot particles in premixed sooting and nucleation flames of <i>n</i>-butane using LII, HIM, and 1 nm-SMPS
Creators: name: Betrancourt, Christopher
name: Fengshan Liu
name: Desgroux, Pascale
name: Mercier, Xavier
name: Faccinetto, Alessandro
name: Salamanca, Maurin
name: Ruwe, Lena
name: Kohse-Höinghaus, Katharina
name: Emmrich, Daniel
name: Beyer, André
name: Gölzhäuser, Armin
name: Tritscher, Torsten
Publisher: name: Taylor & Francis
Year: 2017
Subjects: subject: Biophysics
subject: 29999 Physical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: FOS: Physical sciences
subject: Microbiology
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: FOS: Biological sciences
subject: Cell Biology
subject: Molecular Biology
subject: Biotechnology
subject: 59999 Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: FOS: Earth and related environmental sciences
subject: 39999 Chemical Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: FOS: Chemical sciences
subject: Ecology
subject: 69999 Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified
subject: Cancer
subject: Hematology
subject: 110309 Infectious Diseases
subject: FOS: Health sciences
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Laser-induced incandescence (LII) measurements were conducted to explore the ability of LII to detect small soot particles of less than 10 nm in two sooting flat premixed flames of <i>n</i>-butane: a so-called nucleation flame obtained at a threshold equivalence ratio Φ = 1.75, in which the incipient soot particles undergo only minor soot surface growth along the flame, and a more sooting flame at Φ = 1.95. Size measurements were obtained by modeling the time-resolved LII signals detected using 1064 nm laser excitation. Spectrally-resolved LII signals collected in the nucleation flame display a similar blackbody-like behavior as mature soot. Soot particle temperature was determined from spectrally-resolved detection. LII modeling was conducted using parameters either relevant to those of mature soot or derived from fitting the modeled results to the experimental LII data. Particle size measurements were also carried out using (1) <i>ex situ</i> analysis by helium-ion microscopy (HIM) of particles sampled thermophoretically and (2) online size distribution analysis of microprobe-sampled particles using a 1 nm-SMPS. The size distributions of the incipient soot particles, found in the nucleation flame and in the early soot region of the Φ = 1.95 flame, derived from time-resolved LII signals are in good agreement with HIM and 1 nm-SMPS measurements and are in the range of 2–4 nm. The thermal and optical properties of incipient soot were found to be not radically different from those of mature soot commonly used in LII modeling. This explains the ability of incipient soot particles to produce continuous thermal emissions in the visible spectrum. This study demonstrates that LII is a promising <i>in situ</i> optical particle sizing technique that is capable of detecting incipient soot as small as about 2.5 nm and potentially 2 nm and resolving small changes in soot sizes below 10 nm. © 2017 American Association for Aerosol Research