Towards an improved description of carbonaceous particle morphology

Carbon nanoparticle (CNP) formation from hydrocarbon combustion is of high interest not only for the study of pollutant (soot) emissions, but also in the area of advanced materials. CNP optical and electronical properties, relevant for practical applications, significantly change with their morphology and nanostructure. This work extends a detailed soot kinetic model, based on the discrete sectional approach, to explicitly incorporate the description of CNP polydispersity, maintaining the CHEMKIN-like format. The model considers various nanosized primary particles, generated from liquid-like counterparts through the carbonization process. The model is validated against literature experiments from 11 laminar flames, in both premixed and counterflow configuration, over a wide range of operating conditions (P=1 5 atm, T max =1556-2052 K). The model captures the measured trends of the analyzed CNP properties. Model deviations from the experiments are also discussed.