Project Description

Morphology dynamics of combustion-generated particles

There is renewed interest in understanding the detailed structure of soot because a) soot is the second largest contributor to radiative forcing (exhibiting by far the largest uncertainty) and b) such understanding is needed for accurate monitoring of carbon black synthesis, soot emissions and fire detection. Now this is facilitated by discrete element modeling of soot surface growth, agglomeration and oxidation with rigorous comparison to experimental data at various combustion conditions from different laboratories.

Sotiris E. Pratsinis is a Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering and Fellow of the Combustion Institute and AIChE. He focuses on understanding particle dynamics in flames for the development of scalable processes for manufacture of novel catalysts, biomaterials and gas sensors in close collaboration with their end-users. http://www.ptl.ethz.ch/people/person-detail.html?persid=79969