A Semenov Model of Self-Heating in Compost Piles

Investigation of the propensity of sulfide concentrates to spontaneous combustion in storage

“…Mathematical models for depicting spontaneous heating of thermally unstable materials include Semenov's model, FrankKamenetskii's model, and Thomas' model (Janes et al, 2008;Nelson, Balakrishan, & Chen, 2003). When depletion of the reactant is neglected, the unsteady-state energy balance equation (Jones, Chiz, Koh, & Matthew, 1996;Malow & Krause, 2004) for selfheating of sulfide concentrates can be written as follows:…”

Unsteady 2D coupled heat and mass transfer in porous media with biological and chemical heat generations

“…A parametric equation to describe the biological processes activation and inactivation has been often used in aerobic biodegradation in order to calculate the organic fraction of municipal solid waste [35] and for solid phase fermentation processes [36][37][38][39]. The theory developed by Semenov was used by Nelson et al [40] to describe the heat increase at low temperatures inside a pile as a result of exothermic biological activity, as well as the oxidation of cellulose and cellulose-like materials as fuels after the initial ignition. The Galerkin method has been used to obtain a semi-analytical solution to capture temperature increments in 1D and 2D compost piles due to micro-organisms undergoing exothermic reactions, which shows excellent agreements with a finite-difference solution [41].…”

A simple spatial model for self-heating compost piles

“…Nelson et al [10] analysed a spatially uniform model, based upon the theory of Semenov for thermal explosions, for self-heating in compost piles. They investigated the cases when self-heating is due to purely biological heat release and due to a combination of biological and chemical heat release.…”