On the Adequacy of Chemiluminescence as a Measure for Heat Release in Turbulent Flames With Mixture Gradients

The determination of the heat release in technical flames is commonly done via bandpass filtered chemiluminescence measurements in the wavelength range of OH(*) or CH(*) radicals, which are supposed to be a measure for the heat release rate. However, these indirect heat release measurements are problematic because the measured intensities are the superposition of the desired radical emissions and contributions from the broadband emissions of CO(2)(*). Furthermore, the chemiluminescence intensities are strongly affected by the local air excess ratio of the flame and the turbulence intensity in the reaction zone. To investigate the influence of these effects on the applicability of chemiluminescence as a measure for the heat release rate in turbulent flames with mixture gradients, a reference method is used, which is based on the first law of thermodynamics. It is shown that although the integral heat release can be correlated with the integral chemiluminescence intensities, the heat release distribution is not properly represented by any signal from OH(*) or CH(*). No reliable information about the spatially resolved heat release can be obtained from chemiluminescence measurements in flames with mixture gradients.