Electric Field Effect on Soot Formation and Collection from Diffusion Flames

The characterization of combustion-formed particulate matter for possible applications as optoelectronic organic materials is studied. A copper probe is inserted at different heights above the burner hole. Probe sampling is followed by collection via particles impactor, containing two main different classes of materials, soot and nanoparticles of organic carbon (NOC). Soot (Carbon) particles are collected from laminar and turbulent diffusion flames by means of a DC electric field in the form of chains and clusters. The great majority of soot particles are found to be positively charged. The I-V characteristics are measured in order to estimate the electrical properties during soot collection. The electric current increases as the collection time increases due to the agglomeration of charged soot particles on the copper probe. It is observed that, the activation energy (Ea) increases with increasing of the probe height (H) till reaching to a maximum value. The mobility of ions for soot particles is decreased with the applied potential and increased with the probe height for the turbulent and laminar diffusion flame. The compositions of soot powder samples are investigated by energy dispersive X-ray pattern (EDX) and the size of the soot particles are calculated by dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique.