Thermal Treatment Under High-Vacuum of Tars Relevant in Combustion and Material Science

A fractionation method based on high-vacuum heating has been set up for separating lighter and heavier components of a typical tar extracted from flame-formed soot (soot extract). The method is useful for tracing to the structure/composition of complex mixtures of heavy aromatic species. It has been preliminarily tested on both single (coronene) and mixtures of typical polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) featuring the basic aromatic moieties of flame-formed tars.