Analysis of thermal decomposition of a reactive material in a slab

Analysis of thermal decomposition of reactive combustible material in a slab is paramount in understanding the heat transfer of engineering processes and to prevent possible human and environmental hazard as well as industrial safety. In this dissertation, a model showing the temperature history of an exothermic chemical kinetics in a slab of combustible material with variable pre-exponential factor in the present of a convective heat loss to the ambient is presented. Both transient and steady state problems are tackled. The critical regime separating the regions of explosive and non-explosive of a one step exothermic chemical reaction is determined. The governing nonlinear partial differential equations are solved numerically by method of lines (MOL), with finite difference schemes used for the discretisation of the spatial derivatives. Moreover, perturbation technique together with a special type of Hermite-Padé series summation and improvement method were employed to tackle the steady state problem in order to determine the thermal criticality condition. The crucial roles played by the embedded parameters in determining the temperature profiles of the system were demonstrated. The results also indicated change of parameters led to an increase in slab temperature while heat loss parameter was found to behave in the opposite direction. This in turn led to an increase in thermal stability in the reacting system. Finally, this work can be expanded further in the future by using different dimensions and shapes.