Autoignition of combustible fluids in porous insulation materials

Abstract

The leakage of combustible fluids into the lagging of pipework in the process engineering industry can be very hazardous because of the increased residence time for oxidation as the liquid resides in the porous medium and also the substantially modified heat and mass transfer rates when compared with ignition at hot surfaces. The exothermic reaction can lead to ignition or at least severe self-heating with the consequent damage of pipework, etc. Experiments have been performed to simulate this hazard. The thermal behavior of a number of combustible liquids placed in porous material has been monitored and evidence is presented in this work that self-heating can indeed take place. It has been found that autoignition occurs at an important “watershed” oven temperature that is related to the volatility of the combustible fluid. A mathematical model for the autoignition of combustible liquid in an inert porous material is presented. The simple model takes a spatially uniform approach to both the energy equation and the liquid equation for the fluid and predicts a watershed temperature such that for a given concentration of fluid in the porous material, the thermal behavior of the system alters abruptly. For all practical purposes, thermal runaway is predicted beyond this watershed condition even though the classical Semenov theory simply predicts an eventual decay to a stable steady state, with no strict “criticality” prediction. The watershed temperature is shown to depend on volatility and reactivity.