Quantum-cascade-laser-based dual-comb thermometry and speciation at high temperatures

Abstract

This work presents a methodology for using spectroscopic models to fit absorption-spectrum measurements made by a quantum-cascade-laser-based dual-comb spectrometer (QCL-DCS) for high-temperature kinetics research. A pair of quantum-cascade frequency combs was employed to detect methane’s ν 4 absorption features between 1270 and 1320 cm−1 in high-temperature shock-tube environments and extract methane mole fraction and gas temperature from the results. The methodology was first validated by comparing DCS measurements against modeled methane spectra at room temperature in a static cell, followed by assessing the fitting procedure in shock-heated mixtures of 2% methane in Ar at 1000 K. In both validation experiments, the tradeoffs between time resolution and measurement precision were explored. Measurements were achieved at a 4 µs measurement rate with 5% uncertainty for temperature and 4% uncertainty for mole fraction at 1000 K. Higher accuracy was achieved with longer measurement averaging, e.g. 1.8% uncertainty for temperature at 40 μ s resolution. Finally, the DCS spectral-fitting methodology was demonstrated to capture temperature and methane time-history evolution during the pyrolysis of iso-octane, a primary gasoline reference fuel. Good agreement was observed with kinetic models, and future applications for DCS kinetics research are discussed.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Dec 02, 2020
Source ID
10.1088/1361-6501/abc029

Entities

People

  • Christopher L. Strand
  • Nicolas Pinkowski
  • Ronald Kent Hanson
  • Séan J. Cassady

Organizations

  • Air Force Office of Scientific Research

Tags

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Optical Physics and Photonics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Directed Energy - Lasers
  • Quantum Computing