Pollutant formation has become a great concern because of public health and environmental consequences. In the near future, additional regulations will limit soot emission levels and require knowledge of the soot particle size distribution. The present work intends to develop an accurate model to describe formation of soot particles, which can be applied to technical devices such as gas turbine engines. The model involves detailed chemistry and a comprehensive description of soot particle dynamics and chemistry and describes the interactions with the turbulent flow. The particles are formed from aromatic gas phase species and grow by chemical reactions and condensation of molecules on the surface. Oxidation extracts mass from soot particles back into the gas phase.

In the current model, gas species mass fractions are solved explicitly up to 4-ring molecules (pyrene). Then a H-Abstraction, C2H2-Addition (HACA) mechanism is used for the growth of bigger hydrocarbon molecules. Finally, a statistical representation of soot particles is used, where several transport equations are solved for soot corresponding to the first moments of the particle size distribution. A database of experimental laminar premixed and counterflow diffusion flames have been created involving different fuels like CH4, C2H2, C2H4, C2H6, C3H8, C4H8. The model and the chemistry are currently being compared against this database of experimental measurements. The project also involve the integration of the soot model into combustion models for large-eddy simulation.