Fundamentals of premixed flames

Abstract

Lavoisier, Berthollet and Dalton were pioneers in the understanding of the mixture composition needed for a flame existence, and in the early 1800s, Sir Humphry Davy created a miner’s lamp with a fine meshed net that improved the safety for mine workers, as the mesh was finer than the quenching distance and hence reduced the number of accidental explosions. When Bunsen created the burner associated with his name in 1855 [1], the premixed flame was ‘understood’. However, as the following will show, there was, in the words of Richard Feynman, plenty of room at the bottom