What causes it?
If it is from bacteria, why don’t they die from the heat before it reaches ignition temp?
http://www.uow.edu.au/~mnelson/research.dir/compost.html
http://io9.com/how-spontaneous-combustion-really-happens-698848769
Piles of hay, charcoal, wood chips, cotton, and even paper will sometimes spontaneously burst into flame. This isn’t because they’re too dry. It’s because they were stacked up when they were far too wet.
Spontaneous combustion, or a sudden eruption of fire, sounds a lot more mysterious than it is. It gives the impression of being a nearly supernatural event that can’t be stopped. Actually, it’s so common that many industries take pains to prevent it from happening all the time. There are barns, hay fields, forests, compost heaps, and, once, a two-ton pile of wood chips that have spontaneously caught fire.
And really, water is the culprit. Water makes biological processes possible. And biological processes can generate a great deal of heat.
It starts with respiration. Plant cells can take quite some time to die, and if there’s a lot of water inside a plant – if it’s too green – the plant will breathe, putting out heat and “sweating” out water. Then the bacteria and fungi take over. If they have a warm, wet, home, they’ll munch on the plant matter around them, generating even more heat, and reproducing. Water even plays a part in spreading heat, steaming outwards and warming the area around the center of the pile.
Eventually the temperature hits a critical point, and the pile begins to smolder. This is especially a problem in materials like straw or peat, that form natural kindling that ignites with tiny points of high-heat and little spare oxygen. More terrifyingly, the pile can heat and heat, but without exposure to oxygen can’t actually start to burn – until someone rakes into it and exposes the super-heated material to air. Then it bursts into flame from the inside out.
Even metal can help water turn a pile of plant matter into an inferno. Some metals, like copper, effectively lower the combustion temperature of the material around them. They act as catalysts, grabbing oxygen from the air and releasing it to the material, letting it start to burn easily. In the case of the two-ton woodchip pile, water diffused outwards, heating wood that had been covered in acetone before it had been ground up. Iron salts in the pile heated up enough to set the acetone alight, and the entire thing went up in flames. Sometimes, water is exactly what you need to get a fire going.
Which is why, Either you make compost or you make hay.
No forking about unless it is too wet.
Thanks Boris. I’m at work so I can’t read through that first link, but it seems that a biolgical process starts the heating and then a chemical process continues the heating until ignition?
We had a 200 ton mulch pile that kept igniting over the weekend.
Kingy said:
Thanks Boris. I’m at work so I can’t read through that first link, but it seems that a biolgical process starts the heating and then a chemical process continues the heating until ignition?We had a 200 ton mulch pile that kept igniting over the weekend.
Not much you can do once it starts igniting .. as turning it will only let more oxygen in.
Wetting it down is a bit expensive even if you have enough water.
Not sure if this will work, I’m trying to get links working on my phone.
Kingy said:
Not sure if this will work, I’m trying to get links working on my phone.http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i12/Kingtut_WA/FireBrigade/20140330_145348_zpssh1icvv0.jpg!
Basically this is like your average open cut brown coal mine fire..
You are gonna need lotsa water or you are going to have to contain it and let it burn itself out.Which will still take lotsa water.
roughbarked said:
Kingy said:
Not sure if this will work, I’m trying to get links working on my phone.http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i12/Kingtut_WA/FireBrigade/20140330_145348_zpssh1icvv0.jpg!
Basically this is like your average open cut brown coal mine fire..
You are gonna need lotsa water or you are going to have to contain it and let it burn itself out.Which will still take lotsa water.
Let’s look at it this way.. An old man who has been in the nursery game for 60 years.. Mid Winter, is watering bundles of trees that have been dug up tied in bundles and reburied in a soil sawdust mix.. He finishes watering and I mean he has been watering for four hours or more.. He drops his cigarette butt.. He goes home. This is Saturday lunch time.. Monday morning when I turn up.. several hundreds of thousands of trees are all gone.. burnt to a crisp.
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:
Kingy said:
Not sure if this will work, I’m trying to get links working on my phone.http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i12/Kingtut_WA/FireBrigade/20140330_145348_zpssh1icvv0.jpg!
Basically this is like your average open cut brown coal mine fire..
You are gonna need lotsa water or you are going to have to contain it and let it burn itself out.Which will still take lotsa water.
Let’s look at it this way.. An old man who has been in the nursery game for 60 years.. Mid Winter, is watering bundles of trees that have been dug up tied in bundles and reburied in a soil sawdust mix.. He finishes watering and I mean he has been watering for four hours or more.. He drops his cigarette butt.. He goes home. This is Saturday lunch time.. Monday morning when I turn up.. several hundreds of thousands of trees are all gone.. burnt to a crisp.
in a sea of mud.. the sawdust all ignited.
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:Basically this is like your average open cut brown coal mine fire..
You are gonna need lotsa water or you are going to have to contain it and let it burn itself out.Which will still take lotsa water.
Let’s look at it this way.. An old man who has been in the nursery game for 60 years.. Mid Winter, is watering bundles of trees that have been dug up tied in bundles and reburied in a soil sawdust mix.. He finishes watering and I mean he has been watering for four hours or more.. He drops his cigarette butt.. He goes home. This is Saturday lunch time.. Monday morning when I turn up.. several hundreds of thousands of trees are all gone.. burnt to a crisp.
in a sea of mud.. the sawdust all ignited.
We used 60000lts of water and 180lts of class A firefighting foam concentrate. I’ve never used more than 20lts of foam in an entire summer.
It took a loader all day to break it up so that we could get to the ignition point.
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:Let’s look at it this way.. An old man who has been in the nursery game for 60 years.. Mid Winter, is watering bundles of trees that have been dug up tied in bundles and reburied in a soil sawdust mix.. He finishes watering and I mean he has been watering for four hours or more.. He drops his cigarette butt.. He goes home. This is Saturday lunch time.. Monday morning when I turn up.. several hundreds of thousands of trees are all gone.. burnt to a crisp.
in a sea of mud.. the sawdust all ignited.
I am an older man but He, wasn’t me.
This being the fifth post. I take it you have read the other four.
Kingy said:
We used 60000lts of water and 180lts of class A firefighting foam concentrate. I’ve never used more than 20lts of foam in an entire summer.It took a loader all day to break it up so that we could get to the ignition point.
Breaking it up most often creates new ignition points.
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:in a sea of mud.. the sawdust all ignited.
I am an older man but He, wasn’t me.This being the fifth post. I take it you have read the other four.
poikilotherm said:
roughbarked said:
roughbarked said:I am an older man but He, wasn’t me.
This being the fifth post. I take it you have read the other four.
!http://d22zlbw5ff7yk5.cloudfront.net/images/stash-1-1562503ae475c5053.jpeg
I admit, I did cackle. :)
roughbarked said:
Which is why, Either you make compost or you make hay.No forking about unless it is too wet.
I’m surprised that south korea doesn’t hit north korea hard – I reckon that a first strike and north korea would fold like a house of cards
You aren’t a proper farmer until you’ve had a haystack fire
Ref: an old farmer in Western District Victoria.
(I think you have to have made a successful insurance claim for more hay than was really in the hayshed, too…)
wookiemeister said:
I’m surprised that south korea doesn’t hit north korea hard – I reckon that a first strike and north korea would fold like a house of cards
It could be the huge loss of life involved. Even Putin knows you can’t go around killing people for geopolitical ends.
Lived in Alice when younger, put bunch green grass etc in bin earlier in day, think it were same night when in bed perhaps just gone sleep wheelie bin literally exploded (loud as a shotgun), caught fire, by time got dressed and got out there bin was fairly much burnt to the ground.
> Too wet … Then the bacteria and fungi take over
Just for extra information, my sister wrote a Uni course on food preservation and one of the interesting facts in that course it that fungi survive on a much lower water content than bacteria. Fungi will thrive in a water content too low for bacteria to survive. That’s why bread for example will grow fungi rather than bacteria, because it is relatively dry.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that fungi all grow too slowly to produce the heat required for spontaneous combustion of mulch. To get that combustion would require enough water for bacteria to thrive.
mollwollfumble said:
> Too wet … Then the bacteria and fungi take overJust for extra information, my sister wrote a Uni course on food preservation and one of the interesting facts in that course it that fungi survive on a much lower water content than bacteria. Fungi will thrive in a water content too low for bacteria to survive. That’s why bread for example will grow fungi rather than bacteria, because it is relatively dry.
My guess, and it is only a guess, is that fungi all grow too slowly to produce the heat required for spontaneous combustion of mulch. To get that combustion would require enough water for bacteria to thrive.
That’s spot on.