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Is it hot, relatively fast, and self sustaining?

If you make your pellets small enough, it is. The combustion of steel brushes is quite interesting to watch.

If you make your pellets too small, then is stops being an ordinary combustion and becomes an explosion.



If you get small enough, you start getting into the territory of dust explosions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_explosion

Another interesting phenomenon is spontaneous combustion where exothermic reactions get hot enough to start the combustion process in a medium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_combustion#:~:te....

I was a fire engineer in a past life, forgot the science but remember the cool phenomenons.


"Iron burning in atmosphere of pure oxygen"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7j14otCdyY



Right. If you increase the surface area or add more oxidizer, iron quite readily burns, see thermic lances, ferrocerium, metal powder explosions etc. But that is different than rusting.




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