Isomer discrimination of PAHs formed in sooting flames by jet-cooled laser-induced fluorescence: application to the measurement of pyrene and fluoranthene

Jet-cooled laser-induced fluorescence is a spectroscopic method, specifically developed for the study of PAHs formed in flames. This technique has already been used to measure different aromatic species in sooting low-pressure methane flames such as benzene, naphthalene, and pyrene. The use of the LIF technique to excite PAHs drastically cooled down inside a supersonic jet offers the possibility to get selective and quantitative profiles of PAHs sampled from sooting flames. In this paper, we demonstrate the ability of this experimental method to separate the contribution of two mass isomers generated in sooting flames which are the pyrene and the fluoranthene. The selectivity of the method is demonstrated by studying the spectral properties of these species. The method is then applied to the measurement of both these species in two sooting flames with different equivalence ratios and stabilized at 200 torr (26.65 kPa). The sensitivity of the technique has been found to reach a few ppb in the case of fluoranthene measurements.