The role of soot aggregate fusing in laminar flames: a study employing fusing models derived from carbon black
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
O’Sullivan, Daniel
Rigopoulos, Stelios
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The evolving morphology of carbonaceous aggregates has been previously ignored to a large extent in sooting flame studies. Soot aggregate fusing causes a reduction in surface area and the number of primary particles per aggregate. Despite soot aggregate fusing directly impacting the morphology of aggregates, there is no agreed model for the characteristic timescale for this process. Previous flame simulations used fusing timescale models based on other materials such as titania and silica, which feature different fusing mechanisms. Recently, a series of carbonaceous-based soot fusing models have been proposed that are intrinsically derived from carbonaceous materials such as carbon black or lab-produced ethylene soot. In the present work, these carbonaceous-material-based soot fusing models are implemented in a two population balance equation (PBE) framework and are further coupled with a reactive computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code in order to simulate the laminar Santoro series of flames across all three smoking conditions (non-smoking, incipient smoking, smoking). Predictions of soot volume fraction, total number density, number of primary particles per aggregate, and primary particle diameter are presented across all three flames and compared against experimental observations where possible. The importance of soot fusing is elucidated across various regions within flames and the predictive power of each fusing model is discussed.
Date Issued
2026-03-01
Date Acceptance
2026-01-29
Citation
Journal of Aerosol Science, 2026, 193
ISSN
0021-8502
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Aerosol Science
Volume
193
Copyright Statement
© 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
106758
Date Publish Online
2026-02-04