In this work sooting tendencies were measured for 10 lactones and two alkenoic acids, which are potential isomerization products of lactones . The sooting tendencies were measured as yield sooting indices (YSIs) , which allows the results to be compared with previous measurements for conventional fuels and hundreds of pure hydrocarbons . Figure shows that sugars can lead to a variety of lactones, so the test compounds included a range of ring sizes and a varying number of carbon atoms in the sidechain (including some cases with no side-chain). Simulations were also performed to interpret the experimental results and extrapolate them to other combustion conditions. These included molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using the ReaxFF force field and quantum chemistry calculations .