Soot formation in a co-flow diffusion ethylene flame with the addition of CO2 to the fuel (the CO2-F), oxidizer (the CO2-O), and fuel/oxidizer (the CO2-F/O) streams was numerically and experimentally investigated in this study. The effects of different CO2 addition ways on soot inception, soot condensation, H-abstraction-C2H2-addition (HACA) and oxidation by O2/OH processes, were quantitatively analyzed by introducing the integrated reaction rates over the whole computational domain.