Measurements of the maximum temperature increase in self-heating solids
under substantially sub-critical conditions provide useful estimates of rates
of heat generation at different temperatures. The purpose of this paper is to
calculate theoretically the extent to which these estimates are affected by
consumption of reactant during self-heating.
It is confirmed that the effect of reactant consumption in this region is
considerably less than its effect on the critical condition for thermal
explosion. For systems having a heat of reaction high enough to permit sharply
defined thermal explosion, the effect of reactant consumption on substantially
sub-critical self-heating can be to reduce the maximum temperature by less than
10 per cent.
