Determination of Critical Self-Ignition Temperature of Tropical Peat Land: A Case Study from Indonesia

Peat is a combustible material, and peat fire may be initiated by self-heating that triggers spontaneous combustion in some conditions. Therefore, peat type and volume are expected to correlate with the Critical Self-Ignition Temperature (CSIT) value. Eight samples used in this experiment represent hemic and sapric peats. This study uses a 5 cm wire-mesh basket to examine the CSIT value for each sample. Peat was heated at a constant ambient temperature (TE) using a designated oven. Different TE values were used to find the subcritical and supercritical conditions. Once these two conditions are obtained, the CSIT value is interpolated from the value between these two TE. The results of the experiments show all of the samples start to self-ignite at 170 °C, and we can conclude that there is no significant correlation between the type of peat and its CSIT value. To up-scale the calculation into the larger peat volume, a trend on the book versus CSIT diagram was used to interpolate the CSIT value for thicker peat layers and conclude that 8 m of peat thickness with 10% of inorganic content and <50% of moisture may be ignited at a temperature less than 50 °C. The result of this study could be used as preliminary data on the surface temperature that may induce spontaneous combustion. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.