A new soot model is presented, which has been developed for CFD applications, combining accuracy and efficiency. While the chemical reactions of small gas phase species are captured by a detailed chemical kinetic mechanism, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and soot particles are represented by sectional approaches. The latter account for important mechanisms such as the formation of sections, their oxidation, the condensation of acetylene, and the collisions between sections. The model has been designed to predict soot for a variety of fuels with good accuracy at relatively low computational cost. Universal model parameters are applied, which require no tuning in dependence of test case or fuel. Soot predictions of ethylene, propylene, kerosene surrogate, and toluene flames are presented, which show good agreement with the experimental data. Furthermore, the importance of the correct choice for thermodynamic data of PAHs and soot is highlighted and the impact of heat radiation is discussed. (C) 2011 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.