Home – Home – Jornals – Chemistry for Sustainable Development 2022 number 5

Results of the classical method for determining the tendency of coals to spontaneous ignition from the rate constant of oxygen sorption are compared with those obtained using the improved method of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). To study the sorption capacity of the studied coal samples by thermogravimetric analysis, it is proposed to heat the samples at a constant heating rate of 5 °C/min to 300 °C instead of high temperatures (1000 °C), implying coal combustion. The chemical activity of coal samples with respect to oxygen is to be calculated from the maximum mass gain within the temperature range corresponding to oxidation. As a result of the experiment, on the basis of thermogravimetric dependences, differences were revealed in the behaviour of coal samples, prone and not prone to spontaneous ignition. In comparison with the classical V. S. Veselovsky’s method of determining the tendency of coals to spontaneous ignition, the TGA method allows one to get a more complete picture of the chemical activity of coals, which affects the reliability of assigning the analyzed sample to the category of spontaneous ignition hazard.