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A computational model to simulate self-heating ignition across scales, configurations, and coal origins

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Title: A computational model to simulate self-heating ignition across scales, configurations, and coal origins
Authors: Yuan, H
Restuccia, F
Richter, F
Rein, G
Item Type: Journal Article
Abstract: Self-heating of fuel layers can trigger ignition when the temperature of the surroundings is sufficiently high. Self-heating ignition has been a hazard and safety concern in raw materials production, transportation, and storage facilities for centuries. Hot plate and oven-basket experiments are the two most used lab-scale experiments to assess the hazard of self-heating ignition. While extensive experiments have been done to study this phenomenon, modelling of the experiments is substantially lagging behind. A computational model that can accurately simulate self-heating ignition under the two experimental configurations has not been developed yet. In this study, we build such a model by coupling heat transfer, mass transfer, and chemistry using the open-source code Gpyro. Due to the accessibility of large amount of experimental data, coal is chosen as the material for model validation. A literature review of the kinetic parameters for coal samples from different origins reveals that there is a compensation effect between the activation energy and exponential factor. Combining the compensation effect with our model, we simulate 6 different experimental studies covering the two experimental configurations, a wide range of sample sizes (heights ranging from 5 mm to 126 mm), and various coal origins (6 countries). The model accurately predicts critical ignition temperature (Tig) for all 24 experiments with an error below 7 °C. This computational model unifies for the first time the two most used self-heating ignition experiments and provides theoretical insights to understand self-ignition for different fuels under different conditions.
Issue Date: 15-Jan-2019
Date of Acceptance: 11-Sep-2018
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/64683
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2018.09.065
ISSN: 0016-2361
Publisher: Elsevier
Start Page: 1100
End Page: 1109
Journal / Book Title: Fuel
Volume: 236
Copyright Statement: © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/)
Sponsor/Funder: Commission of the European Communities
EPSRC
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Funder's Grant Number: 682587
EP/M506345/1
EP/L504786/1
Keywords: Science & Technology
Technology
Energy & Fuels
Engineering, Chemical
Engineering
Self-heating
Ignition
Coal
Hot plate
Oven-basket
LOW-TEMPERATURE OXIDATION
SMOLDERING COMBUSTION
KINETIC-PARAMETERS
THERMAL IGNITION
DUST LAYERS
HOT SURFACE
PYROLYSIS
BEHAVIOR
BIOMASS
LIGNITE
0904 Chemical Engineering
0913 Mechanical Engineering
0306 Physical Chemistry (Incl. Structural)
Energy
Publication Status: Published
Online Publication Date: 2018-09-24
Appears in Collections:Mechanical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering