Oxidation kinetics regularity in spontaneous combustion of gas coal

Abstract In order to investigate the oxidation kinetics of gas coal at low temperatures, we derived a rate equation of oxygen consumption during low-temperature oxidation of gas coal and deduced an E-c equation, expressing the relation between active energy E and oxygen concentration c . The reaction order n and active energy E were calculated with this equation based on experiments of static oxygen consumption tests. In addition, we proved the rationality of the E-c equation using a kinetic compensation effect and obtained the isokinetic temperature T c . The results show that: 1) the gas coal oxidizes easily with increasing temperature and the oxidation tends to be spontaneous at higher temperatures; 2) the oxygen concentration c affects oxygen consumption very much at lower temperatures but has only a small effect at higher temperatures; 3) the isokinetic temperature T c was 127 °C which has been experimentally validated as the key turning point during low-temperature spontaneous combustion of gas coal.