Kinetic Regimes of Developed Chain Combustion

It is shown that chain thermal explosion is an inherent property of chain branching combustion that is due to simultaneous action of a chain avalanche and self-heating, which under certain conditions also becomes a progressively accelerating process. An attempt to deny this phenomenon is in fact equivalent to denying thermal explosion. This phenomenon is also observed in the absence of convection. The chain branching reaction mechanism is involved in all regimes of gas-phase combustion of hydrogen-containing compounds with oxygen. This results in inhibition or promotion of flame propagation, indicating the necessity of taking into account competition between reaction chain branching and termination.