—The departure from frozen flow behavior about a carbon particle in an oxidizing atmosphere, has been discussed in order to obtain the burning rateMover a wide range of the Damköhler numberDg(representing either the particle size or the ambient pressure). The frozen limit (Dg→0) leads to values ofMranging up toM2, the maximum burning rate corresponding to diffusion controlled heterogeneous reactions. By contrast, for finite values ofDgwe find that the burning rate is limited byMlg<M2. The maximum Damköhler numberDg° given by an explicit formula, corresponds to gas phase ignition.