Dr Jason Olfert is Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alberta. His research is focused on developing novel aerosol instruments and characterizing particulate emissions from combustion sources. Dr. Olfert’s past and current research is focused on particulate emissions from internal combustion engines, gas turbine engines, flares, and burners.
Subject of the presentation :
Aerosol instrumentation is often used to measure the physical properties of soot in the exhaust of combustion systems and occasionally in-flame to characterize soot formation processes. Aerosol classifiers, which sort particles by mobility, mass, or relaxation time, have been used in tandem (or in series) with each other to determine the physical properties of soot. This talk will describe the development of two aerosol classifiers which classify particles by their mass and relaxation time. It will then discuss how tandem aerosol measurements can be used to measure: i) soot morphological properties (e.g. effective density, shape factor, primary particle size), ii) the size-segregated mixing state of an aerosol (i.e. measure the mass of volatile material in the aerosol and determine if it exists as individual particles or mixed into the structure of a non-volatile particle), iii) two-dimensional (mass-mobility) distributions, or iv) the distribution of electric charge on the particles.