Examination of a soot model in premixed laminar flames at fuel-rich conditions

The primary objective of the present work is to collect and review the vast amount of experimental data on rich laminar premixed flames of hydrocarbon fuels reported in recent years, and to analyze them by using a detailed kinetic mechanism, identifying aspects of the mechanism of PAH and soot formation requiring further revisions. The kinetic assessment was hierarchically conducted, with the progressive extension of the core C0-C2NUIG mechanism up to the CRECK kinetic mechanism of PAH and soot formation. This mechanism is here adopted to evaluate and analyze the extensive amount of experimental data collected. Therefore, it provides a kinetic guideline, useful to critically compare and unify flames involving similar fuels and/or conditions from different sources. The relevant effect of soot particles formation on heavy PAHs concentration is also discussed, together with the kinetic analysis highlighting systematic deviations and critical issues still existing in the present model. The model performances were evaluated using the Curve Matching approach (Bernardi et al., 2016). Considering the challenges of quantitative PAH measurements and associated uncertainties, this extensive database is a further value of this paper and is beneficial for improving reliability of kinetic models in a wide range of conditions.