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Self-Heating In Compost Piles Due To Biological Effects, Tim Marchant

Tim Marchant

The increase in temperature in compost piles/landfill sites due to micro-organisms undergoing exothermic reactions is modelled. A simplified model is considered in which only biological self-heating is present. The heat release rate due to biological activity is modelled by a function which is a monotonic increasing function of temperature over the range 0⩽T⩽a, whilst for T⩾a it is a monotone decreasing function of temperature. This functional dependence represents the fact that micro-organisms die or become dormant at high temperatures. The bifurcation behaviour is investigated for 1-d slab and 2-d rectangular slab geometries. In both cases there are two generic steady-state …