This paper considers a new experimental set-up to image and study the combustion of a single burning aluminum droplet, which is levitated electrostatically. This work focuses on CO2, CO and mixtures thereof, that have not or scarcely been studied. Aluminum is found to burn in pure CO2 in a diffusion mode (with a scaling, where D0 is the initial particle diameter) whereas combustion in pure CO is kinetically limited and halts swiftly, irrespective of pressure in the range 1–15 atm. Mixtures of CO2 and CO suggest a major driving effect from CO2 compared to CO. Overall, CO and N2 behave as inert species. All the burning time data are processed to propose a new empirical correlation for CO2-CO-N2 mixtures that significantly improves the widely used Beckstead’s correlation while including the role of CO and N2.