Early aggregation in the soot formation region of an ethylene flame

Soot formation starts with particle nucleation, followed by mass and size growth through coalescence, coagulation, surface reactions, and finally by aggregation into fractal structures. The present work reports in deep detail the characteristics of carbon particulate produced at the inception in a heavily sooting laminar premixed ethylene flame. The cold gas velocity was enough low (to slower soot particle formation kinetics and thereby to widen the inception phase.