The 2004 autumn meeting of the Combustion Institute (British Section) on Particles in Flames

The report from the meeting can also be downloaded (PDF) here. For more pictures please scroll down or click here.

The 2004 autumn meeting was held in the Møller Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge on 20 September 2004. The Møller Centre provided some excellent food and facilities that conveniently held just the right number of delegates. A tower with exterior balcony also offered a panoramic view of the Cambrige skyline but strong winds rather limited enjoyment of this - it would have been a great place for lunch on a sunny September day.

The conference which also included the annual general meeting of the British Section concentrated on the formation of particles in flames and the modelling of such processes.

The keynote speakers in the morning were Prof S E Pratsinis (ETH Zurich) and Prof P Roth (Duisburg-Essen). Prof Pratsinis noted that current world production of particles using flamelike techniques is worth over $12 Billion per annum and went on to outline how flame synthesis of a TiO₂ catalyst for NO_x breakdown offered significant improvements in efficiency over conventional wet synthesis methods. He also discussed the use of Si to limit the size of ZnO crystals so that all cystals would accumulate at the same size (chosen to give so called 'quantum dots') rather than establishing a self-preserving distribution.

Prof Roth had a striking illustration of the effects achievable with nano-particles - he highlighted data on the melting point of CdS which drops dramatically as the particle size decreases below 100 nm. However, Prof Roth focussed on the formation of iron oxide from Fe(CO)₅, speaking of the kinetic studies he had undertaken using a shock tube and some simulation work where the results showed considerable sensitivity to certain 'reverse' reaction rates. Finally he described how 'super-para-magnetic' silicon oxide can be made. The morning concluded with the presentation of the Sugden and Hinshelwood prizes which the British Section presents annually. The Sugden prize was awarded to Dr M Kraft (co-incidentally the conference organiser) and his colleague Dr M Balthasar for their paper "A stochastic approach to calculate the particle size distribution function of soot particles in a laminar premixed flame", Comb. and Flame 133:289 (2003). Dr G J Sharpe received the Hinshelwood prize for outstanding work by a younger researcher.

The afternoon sessions consisted of 7 shorter presentations. Allan Hayhurst (Cambridge) described work on metal oxide formation, where concentrations were so low the particle distribution barely changed after inception was completed in the region near to the burner face. Much of the data he presented was collected using a 'Differential Mobility Spectrometer', Nick Collings from the manufacturers, Cambustion, outlined the principles of this instrument and mentioned some of the work done to develop its useful operating range. Cambustion also exhibited one of these instruments - a DMS500 - to delegates and demonstrated it using some cans of smoke. Roy Crookes (Queen Mary) gave some details of how soot particles vary depending on the conditions in which they form and grow, in particular how leaner flames in his spray burner led to larger primary soot particles but with extended spacing between the graphitic layers. Murray Height (ETH Zurich) presented some of his work carried out at MIT in which iron particles in flames are involved in the production of single walled carbon nano-tubes.

Barry Moss (Cranfield) presented detailed simulation/calculation results for a kerosene combustor which showed encouraging agreement with optical measurements taken on a range of ray paths leading to a single sampling port. Mike Westwood (Huntsman) told us of a model taken from papers published by Prof Pratsinis a few years ago that his firm have found useful when applied to their TiO₂ reactors. He said they had also been able to use more recent models to calculate more detailed particle population information in simple flow situations, but they were not yet able to generate such information for more complex flows.

Peter Lindstedt (Imperial) noted that flamelets parameterised by mixture fraction cannot provide an accurate description of turbulent flames and described some of his transported PDF work. He emphasized the importance of accounting for radiation in order to model temperature accurately and showed successful predictions of flame properties.

At the end of the conference a dinner was held in Churchill College to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the British Section of the Combustion Institute. Felix Weinberg entertained the diners with his account of the history of the British section and some of its notable figures.

Robert Patterson

Pictures from the Autumn Meeting

All photos © Neal Morgan

Coffe and refreshments.

People arriving.

Cambustion sponsored the meeting and presented their DMS500 fast particulate spectrometer.

Markus Kraft opening the meeting..

..and greeting everybody.

Sotiris Pratsinis.

Paul Roth.

Chris Lawn.

Michael Balthasar and Markus Kraft after recieving the Sugden Award.

Mike Westwood from Huntsman Tioxide.

View from the Møller Centre tower.

After the meeting a special dinner was held in the Churchill College Fellows Dining Room to celebrate 50^th Anniversary of the British Section of the Combustion Institute.

Dinner speech by Felix Weinberg.

Back to the Autumn Meeting page.