Terrill Cool, professor of applied and engineering physics at Cornell University, has been awarded $354,000 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a three-year study of combustion chemistry.

In his research, Cool applies flame-sampling photoionization mass spectrometry (PIMS) to the detection of key-reaction intermediates in laboratory flames. This, he says, offers significant advantages over the use of conventional electron-impact mass spectrometry for the development of predictive models of the chemical-reaction kinetics of combustion.

Such models have several important applications, including the design and performance monitoring of incinerators used for the removal of hazardous wastes. Other uses include the thermal destruction of chemical warfare agents, the development of clean-burning alternatives to conventional diesel engine fuels and the formulation of high-performance propellants with well-characterized ignition properties.

Detailed computer models are created from measurements obtained from vacuum ultraviolet light (VUV), generated either by tunable lasers or a synchrotron. This is used selectively to photoionize each of the numerous reaction intermediates that are created and consumed by key reaction mechanisms in several combustion systems.

Studies of ethylene/oxygen flames will be carried out at a PIMS experimental facility, supported by the DOE, under construction at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California. The new facility, using synchrotron radiation from the ALS, will produce average photon fluxes 100 times larger than those produced by tunable VUV laser sources. The high flux will be required for full implementation of flame-sampling PIMS.

The wider range of photon energies available at the new ALS facility, says Cool, will be a key advantage offered by synchrotron radiation, not realizable with current tunable laser sources.