“…We also found that while the dominant contribution to the CPU-time spent overall still stems from solving the chemical kinetic equations, solving the population balance can reach about the same computational cost. Experimental results of this study, as well as findings in the literature [14], suggest that aggregates recirculated in exhaust gases play an important role, as described in more detail below, which we substantiated by preliminary simulations. For this reason, we decided to conduct all our simulations over ten consecutive cycles, starting with trapped residuals with typical gas-phase composition, but not containing any soot.…”