On the Combustion of Wood I: A Scale Effect in the Pyrolysis of Solids
- 1 August 1970
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in Combustion Science and Technology
- Vol. 2 (1) , 1-4
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00102207008952229
Abstract
Experiments on well-ventilated cross-piles of wood sticks burning in room air show that the instantaneous mass of the pile normalized with respect to the initial mass is proportional to time/(individual stick thickness)1.6. Experiments conducted by the present authors on isolated α-cellulose cylinders burning free convectively in room air indicate that while the normalized instantaneous mass correlates with (t/d 1.6), the internal temperature profiles correlate with (t/d 2) —t and d respectively denoting time after ignition and specimen diameter. In this paper an approximate analysis is presented to explain this behavior as a consequence of the interaction of heat conduction and finite rate kinetics of thermal decomposition. If Mi is the initial mass (gms), α is thermal diffusivity of the wood species (cm2/sec) and the stick size d is in centimeters, it is shown that the rate of burning can be estimated as 0.9268M iα0.8/d 1.6gm/sec.Keywords
This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:
- Heat and mass transfer to, from, and within cellulosic solids burning in airSymposium (International) on Combustion, 1965
- Experiments on the burning of cross-piles of woodPublished by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) ,1960