Soot formation in diluted laminar ethene, propene and 1-butene diffusion flames at elevated pressures

Soot formation characteristics of ethene, propene, and 1-butene, the most abundant unsaturated intermediates in thermal decomposition of paraffinic hydrocarbons, were investigated in laminar diffusion flames stabilized on a co-flow burner installed in a high-pressure combustion chamber with optical access. All three olefins were diluted with nitrogen to produce sooting but non-smoking diffusion flames at desired pressures. Pressure range was 1-2.5 bar with 1-butene, and 1-8 bar with propene and ethene. Upper pressure limits of 1-butene and propene were established by their respective vapour pressure characteristics. The spectral soot emission technique, in which radiation emitted by the soot within the flame was collected as line-of-sight intensity and spectrally resolved over the range 690-945 nm, was used to measure radially-resolved temperature and soot volume fraction. The carbon mass flow rates of the three fuels were kept constant at 0.505 mg/s to facilitate direct comparison among the fuels at elevated pressures. With the same dilution level, the sooting propensity increased from ethene to 1-butene as expected; however, the pressure sensitivity of propene and 1-butene differed significantly from that of ethene. Soot yields in both propene and 1-butene flames showed a much weaker dependence on pressure than the soot in ethene flames. In the decomposition of propene and 1-butene, allyl radical and 1,3-butadiene are known to form in critical quantities leading to formation of higher molecular growth species specifically six-membered ring aromatics, and presence of these simple aromatics is argued to play a role in lowering the pressure sensitivity of the soot in C3 and C4 olefin flames.