Developing a Predictive Understanding of Soot Formation in Wildfires

Soot particles emitted from wildfires have enormous detrimental effects on human health, agriculture, air and water quality, and global and regional climate. The combustion processes involved in soot-particle production strongly influence their composition and reactivity, toxicity, impact on agricultural productivity, crop value, and water quality, processing in the atmosphere, ability to nucleate clouds, atmospheric lifetime and transport, and optical and radiative properties.

In addition, large radiative heat transfer from soot particles increases the difficulty of controlling and extinguishing medium- to large-scale wildfires. Increasing droughts from climate change and expansion of the wildland-urban interface further increase the frequency of large and uncontrollable wildfires responsible for heavy atmospheric-soot loading and their impact.

Reducing wildfire damage requires effective methods to predict and control fire spread. Radiation from soot is a critical component of wildfire-propagation models, but current models do not accurately model soot-formation chemistry, largely because of a severe lack of understanding of soot-production mechanisms. The goal of this project is to address gaps in the understanding of soot-formation chemistry relevant to wildfires and gain enough knowledge of soot-formation mechanisms via targeted experiments and modeling to develop a realistic sub-model for incorporation into wildfire-propagation models.

An advanced fundamental understanding of soot formation could also benefit predictions of soot formation under a wide range of conditions and for applications such as engines, furnaces, boilers, and explosives. This project will also provide training for the next generation of scientists and engineers who will tackle the challenges of climate change and the increasing frequency of large-scale fires at the wildland-urban interface.

The objectives of this project are to (1) identify the most likely precursors to soot inception, species that lead to particle surface growth, and mechanisms for particle inception and growth during wildfires and (2) develop a predictive model for soot inception during pyrolysis and combustion of biogenic organic compounds and biomass. Vacuum-ultraviolet photoionization aerosol mass spectrometry will be used to probe the precursors and composition of particles generated during the pyrolysis and combustion of biogenic organic compounds.

Particle-size distributions associated with these experiments will be measured using a scanning mobility particle sizer and particle volume fraction, and optical properties will be measured using laser-induced incandescence. The results of these experiments, coupled with theoretical investigations, will be used to develop a chemical kinetic model for soot inception and growth.

The most significant expected outcome is the improvement soot-formation and radiative-heat-transfer sub-models in wildfire propagation and emissions predictions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.