Abstract
To provide guidance on the bioenergy potential of wood and its fire spread numerical simulation, insights into the combustion properties and fire characteristics of one hardwood (sassafras) and two softwoods (pine and fir) were investigated. The effect of different boundary conditions are focused. The condensed phase decomposition in thermogravimetric analysis indicated that the main degradation processes for all wood combustion could be divided into two stages, and the corresponding demarcation point of conversion rate is 0.4 and 0.35 for hardwood and softwood, respectively. Three specific regions could further be established based on the activation energies variations in Stage Ⅰ. The governing reaction mechanism of sassafras wood is determined to be the diffusion model connect with order-based model, while the reaction mechanism of softwoods (pine and fir) can be considered as the reaction order (1st to three-halves) type followed by diffusion model. The gas phase flaming in FPA combustion experiments suggest that fir and pine wood have a faster charring rate and produce less CO and CO2 during pyrolysis and combustion. Sassafras requires more time to be ignited owing to its high density, which causes higher thermal inertia therefore decelerating the temperature increase on the sample surface. In addition, the dense structure of sassafras leads to an early appearance of the second HRR and MLR peaks. As hardwood has a higher density than softwood, the thermal insulation in hardwood delays char cracking on sassafras wood surface and enhances the duration between ignition and flameout. Such findings should provide guidance for wood combustion modeling and flame spread simulation in future works.
Published Version
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