Patent ID: 8752362

Claim:
A combustor, comprising: a combustor housing defining a combustion chamber having a plurality of combustion zones; a plurality of flame detectors disposed on the combustor housing and in optical communication with the combustion chamber, wherein a subset of the plurality of flame detectors is configured to detect an optical property related to a hydrocarbon flame type, with a wavelength of about 300 nanometers (nm) and another subset of the plurality of flame detectors is configured to detect an optical property related to a soot flame type that is a direct product of a combustion process, with a wavelength in the range of about 350 nm to about 450 nm; and a processor configured to determine from the detected optical properties of the hydrocarbon flame type and the soot flame type a presence of the at least one of the flame holding condition and the flashback condition in the one or more of the plurality of combustion zones.