Flame Temperature Measurements by Time-domain Based Supercontinuum Absorption Spectroscopy

Temperature is one of the scalar quantities of major interest in most technical combustion systems such as gas turbines, furnaces or internal combustion engines. In this work, we present for the first time quantitative temperature measurements in a flame by time-domain based supercontinuum absorption spectroscopy. In a 1-dimensional McKenna type burner temperature is inferred from broadband H2O spectra by a multi-peak least-square algorithm to data from the Barber-Tennyson line list (BT2) within a spectral range from 1340 nm to 1485 nm. The results are compared with temperature measurements based on coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering (CARS). A good agreement is achieved, showing the capability of time-domain based supercontinuum absorption spectroscopy temperature measurements in a flame. Further the beneficial influence of high bandwidth detection equipment is presented, which allows for a more distinct detection of many week high temperature transitions.