Analysis of susceptibility of peat on its spontaneous heating and self-ignition properties

The Main School of Fire Service, Faculty of Fire Safety Engineering, 52/54 Slowackiego St., 01-629 Warsaw, Poland

^* Corresponding author: mpolka@sgsp.edu.pl

Abstract

The objective of the paper was to review and to assess the propensity of selected peat dusts to self-ignite. A comparison was carried out of the impact that the volume of dust storage exerts on values of the self-ignition temperature. The necessity of increasing peat share in generation of energy forced the investors to re-design or create from scratch a new technology. Due to differences between combustion of the fuel - biomass and coal - also the safety issues required a completely new approach. Therefore, this article presents factors that affect spontaneous heating and self-ignition of peat on its self-ignition properties when stored in bulk. The values of experimentally determined temperatures of self-ignition for peat are included. The research was performed in compliance with methods specified in PN-EN 15188:2009. The were used three types of dusts having varying crushing levels and level acidity. Based on the analysis of results, it was determined that analysing the self-ignition tendency of the examined dusts is of informative nature and it can differ from the actual conditions prevailing when stockpiling the examined peat dusts.