Two-Dimensional Tomographic Simultaneous Multi-Species Visualization—Part I: Experimental Methodology and Application to Laminar and Turbulent Flames

In recent years, the tomographic visualization of laminar and turbulent flames has received much attention due to the possibility of observing combustion processes on-line and with high temporal resolution. In most cases, either the spectrally non-resolved flame luminescence or the chemiluminescence of a single species is detected and used for the tomographic reconstruction. In this work, we present a novel 2D emission tomographic setup that allows for the simultaneous detection of multiple species (e.g., OH*, CH* and soot but not limited to these) using a single image intensified CCD camera. We demonstrate the simultaneous detection of OH* (310 nm), CH* (430 nm) and soot (750 nm) in laminar methane/air, as well as turbulent methane/air and ethylene/air diffusion flames. As expected, the reconstructed distributions of OH* and CH* in laminar and turbulent flames are highly correlated, which supports the feasibility of tomographic measurements on these kinds of flames and at timescales down to about 1 ms. In addition, the possibilities and limitations of the tomographic approach to distinguish between locally premixed, partially premixed and non-premixed conditions, based on evaluating the local intensity ratio of OH* and CH* is investigated. While the tomographic measurements allow a qualitative classification of the combustion conditions, a quantitative interpretation of instantaneous reconstructed intensities (single shot results) has a much greater uncertainty.