Two-Step Exothermic Chemical Reaction for Heat Transfer Investigation in a Convective Cylinder

In this article, the investigation of transient heat in a stockpile whose materials react spontaneously with the oxygen trapped within it is carried out. A reactive material in this context refers to any substances that contain carbon or hydrocarbons and readily react with oxygen in contact. The process whereby a carbon containing material reacts automatically with oxygen is called exothermic chemical reaction. The study is modelled in a domain that is cylindrical and loses heat by convection to the surrounding environment. The combustion process for the heat transfer study is very complicated and nonlinear in nature, and therefore, the partial differential equation governing the problem cannot be solved exactly, but numerically. For this purpose, the Finite Difference Method (FDM) was employed to solve the problem. The heat transfer investigation is performed by observing effects of selected embedded thermo-physical parameters like the reaction rate on the temperature of the system. The thermo-physical parameters may either increase or reduce the temperature of the system during combustion of reactive materials. The results obtained indicate that the rate of reaction and some parameters increase the temperature profiles during combustion, whereas the heat loss parameter lowers the levels of the temperature. The results are presented graphically and discussed appropriately.