Visualisation and characterisation of flame radical emissions through intensified spectroscopic imaging

Combustion flames contain strong emissions from excited radical species produced by the combustion process. The monitoring and characterisation of such emissions is important for an in-depth understanding of fuel energy conversion and pollutant formation processes. In this paper, an approach combining emission spectroscopy with intensified digital imaging techniques is proposed for visualising and quantifying the radiative characteristics of free radicals of combustion flames. Recent advances in CCD technology, especially in EM image intensification, have made it possible to obtain high resolution emission images of isolated spectral emissions from particular flame radicals. These can be used to study emission intensity and distribution, with the aim of correlating combustion emission products with flame spectral emission patterns.