European standard EN 15188 is dedicated to the assessment of the tendency of solid flammable substances to spontaneous combustion. Fossil fuels and biofuels that substitute them are a frequent reason of fires caused by spontaneous combustion. Even though having different properties, both types of fuels can be assessed according to this standard by the method of the determination of the dependency of self-ignition temperature against the ratio of volume to surface area of geometrically exactly defined solid body, or based on the theory of thermal explosion according to Frank-Kamenetskii. The comparison of calculated values confirmed the agreement of both methods results, and the tendency of fuels to spontaneous combustion can be assessed by them. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.