The Role of Chain Processes in Cool Flames and Soot Formation

The 125th anniversary of Academician N.N. Semenov, the great natural scientist of the 20th century, is a significant event for the world scientific community. With his discoveries and tireless scientific, organizational, pedagogical, and social activities, he made an invaluable contribution to the formation of chemical physics and to the development of physics, chemistry, and biology. Nobel Prize laureate, academician N.N. Semenov played a huge role in the creation of the Department of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion of the Al-Farabi Kazakh National University and the Institute for Problems in Combustion. Contacts with the disciples of Academician N.N. Semenov made it possible for the researchers of the Institute for Problems in Combustion to discuss their candidate and doctoral dissertations at the seminars of the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow. With the support of N.N. Semenov, Ya.B. Zel’dovich, and A.G. Merzhanov, All-Union Symposia on Combustion and Explosion (1980 in Alma-Ata) and on Structural Macrokinetics (1984 in Alma-Ata) were organized. The article provides an overview of the author’s works on studying the structure of the front of cool flames of diethyl ether and butane, the preflame zone of normal propane flames, and soot formation during combustion of hydrocarbons. The phenomenology, kinetics and mechanism of soot formation, and the influence of various factors on the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, graphene, and soot are considered.