Soot formation characteristics of diffusion flames of methane doped with toluene and n-heptane at elevated pressures

Laminar co-flow diffusion flames of methane doped with n-heptane and toluene were studied experimentally to assess the sooting characteristics of two liquid fuels with increasing pressure. Experiments were conducted in the high-pressure combustion chamber that had been used previously for high-pressure soot formation studies in laminar diffusion flames. Either toluene or n-heptane was added to the methane such that 7.5% of the total carbon would be from the liquid fuel so that the results could be used to infer the pressure dependence of sooting propensities of the two liquid fuels. Pressure range was from atmospheric to 8 atm for methane and methane+n-heptane flames, whereas for methane+toluene mixture it was from atmospheric to 6 atm. A constant carbon mass flow rate of 0.41 mg/s for the three fuels was maintained at all pressures to have tractable measurements. Visible flame heights, as marked by the luminous soot radiation, were constant at all pressures except for methane at 1 atm. Variation of the maximum soot volume fractions, maximum soot yields, and the line-of-sight averaged soot temperatures of the three flames, pure methane, toluene-doped methane, and n-heptane-doped methane, with pressure were evaluated from soot spectral emission measurements which were collected line-of-sight but converted to radially-resolved values by using an Abel type inversion algorithm assuming axisymmetry of the laminar diffusion flames. Maximum soot volume fractions and maximum soot yields in n-heptane- and toluene-doped flames showed the higher sooting propensity of toluene in comparison to n-heptane at elevated pressures. Sooting propensity, in terms of both maximum soot yield and maximum soot volume fraction, of the methane+toulene flame displayed a relatively weaker dependence on pressure as compared to those of methane and methane+n-heptane mixture.