Carbon black is a material produced by the incomplete combustion of coal tar, vegetable matter, or petroleum products, including fuel oil, fluid catalytic cracking tar, and ethylene cracking in a limited supply of air. Carbon black is a form of paracrystalline carbon that has a high surface-area-to-volume ratio, albeit lower than that of activated carbon. It is dissimilar to soot in its much higher surface-area-to-volume ratio and significantly lower polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) content. However, carbon black can be used as a model compound for diesel soot to better understand how diesel soot behaves under various reaction conditions as carbon black and diesel soot have some similar properties such as particle sizes, densities, and copolymer adsorption abilities that contribute to them having similar behaviours under various reactions such as oxidation experiments. Carbon black is used as a colorant and reinforcing filler in tires and other rubber products; pigment and wear protection additive in plastics, paints, and ink pigment. It is used in the EU as a food colorant when produced from vegetable matter (E153).

Soot is a mass of impure carbon particles resulting from the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. It is more properly restricted to the product of the gas-phase combustion process but is commonly extended to include the residual pyrolysed fuel particles such as coal, cenospheres, charred wood, and petroleum coke that may become airborne during pyrolysis and that are more properly identified as cokes or char.