Soot formation
Soot formation in flames is an important physical process as it accounts for the majority of flame radiation and is a pollutant. Soot is a particulate species with a low diffusivity resulting in strong differential transport between soot and gaseous species comprising the flame which affects soot temperature, formation and destruction, and emission. Modeling these processes in turbulent flames is aided by direct numerical simulation.
The movie shows soot evolution in DNS of a 3D, temporally-evolving, planar ethylene jet flame. Four slices down the axis of the jet are shown. The simulation is about 1x2x3 cm in size and is run for 1.1 ms at a cost of 1.5 million CPU-hrs. Two soot moments are solved along with a reduced ethylene mechanism consisting of 19 chemical species.