Abstract:By piling volumes of sulphide ore dumps in stope and testing their temperature, SO ₂ and O ₂ concentrations and the environmental conditions during breeding fire, it was shown that the temperature in the ore dump is the most effective factor to pre estimate breeding fire. Since the oxygen concentration in the environment has little variation during breeding fire, it can not be used as an obvious omen of fire pre estimation. When the temperature in the melnikovite ore dump is greater than 70℃, there will be a large amount of SO ₂ releasing, and the reaction velocity will become much greater. Therefore, SO ₂ can not be taken as the key factor for fire pre estimation too. To control the spontaneous combustion in time, some effective measures should be employed when the temperature in the ore dump is 5～10 ℃ higher than that of the environment.

Key words: sulphide ore dumps breeding fire behaviour in situ measurement