High Temperature Oxidation of Aromatic Hydrocarbons

Even though several models for toluene oxidation have been developed [3-7], the high temperature combustion of this aromatic is not fully understood. Most high temperature studies of toluene carried out to date have involved monitoring the concentration profiles of reactants, stable intermediates, and final products in flow reactors using GC analyses. However, the ignition process of hydrocarbons is, to a large extent, controlled by the transient radical pool (H, OH, C6H5, C6H5CH2, CH3 etc.) and very little information concerning radical concentration profiles during the ignition process is available in the literature. Detailed measurements of radical time histories would provide additional, important targets for chemical kinetic models, leading to improved model predictions of global kinetic parameters, which is important from an engineering perspective.