Radiant emission from the aluminum-water reaction

The exploding wire technique was used in connection with spectropic measurements to investigate the nature of the radiation emitted from the Al-H₂O combustion process. The absolute spectral intensity emitted from the Al-H₂O reaction throughout the 300-800 nm spectral region has been determined experimentally with a resolution of 4nm at various pressures. Higher resolution (0.57 nm resolution) spectroscopic measurements were also made in several regions of interest in the 300-800 nm spectral region. The spectra measured in this study were dominated by line and band emission, but a low-level continuum was also present. A simplified analysis showed that the observed continuum could be plausibly attributed to emission from small (∼0.01 μm) Al₂O₃(1) particles.