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A recently developed laser-induced incandescence technique is used to make novel planar measurements of soot volume fraction within turbulent diffusion flames and droplet flames. The two-dimensional imaging technique is developed and assessed by systematic experiments in a coannular laminar diffusion flame, in which the soot characteristics have been well established. With a single point calibration procedure, agreement to within 10% was found between the values of soot volume fraction measured by this technique and those determined by conventional laser scattering-extinction methods in the flame. As a demonstration of the wide range of applicability of the technique, soot volume fraction images are also obtained from both turbulent ethene diffusion flames and from a freely falling droplet flame that burns the mixture of 75% benzene and 25% methanol. For the turbulent diffusion flames, approximately an 80% reduction in soot volume fraction was found when the Reynolds number of the fuel jet increased from 4000 to 8000. In the droplet flame case, the distribution of soot field was found to be similar to that observed in coannular laminar diffusion flames.

A new cell design has been developed for use in photoacoustic calorimetry. In contrast to previous designs, this cell has a hundred-fold better sensitivity (signal/energy absorbed), allows measurements to be made on optically thick solutions, allows greater laser pulse energy to be used (with consequent increase in signal levels), allows greater time resolution of transient decays in the time regime below 100 ns, and reduces the effects of reflections. The determination of photophysical parameters by use of photoacoustic calorimetry requires iterative reconvolution, and improved algorithms for these processes are presented.

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