Kinetic study of the pyrolysis of miscanthus and its acid hydrolysis residue by thermogravimetric analysis

Ana Maria Cortes, A. V. Bridgwater*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The kinetic parameters of the pyrolysis of miscanthus and its acid hydrolysis residue (AHR) were determined using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The AHR was produced at the University of Limerick by treating miscanthus with 5 wt.% sulphuric acid at 175 °C as representative of a lignocellulosic acid hydrolysis product. For the TGA experiments, 3 to 6 g of sample, milled and sieved to a particle size below 250 μm, were placed in the TGA ceramic crucible. The experiments were carried out under non-isothermal conditions heating the samples from 50 to 900 °C at heating rates of 2.5, 5, 10, 17 and 25 °C/min. The activation energy (EA) of the decomposition process was determined from the TGA data by differential analysis (Friedman) and three isoconversional methods of integral analysis (Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose, Ozawa–Flynn–Wall, Vyazovkin). The activation energy ranged from 129 to 156 kJ/mol for miscanthus and from 200 to 376 kJ/mol for AHR increasing with increasing conversion. The reaction model was selected using the non-linear least squares method and the pre-exponential factor was calculated from the Arrhenius approximation. The results showed that the best fitting reaction model was the third order reaction for both feedstocks. The pre-exponential factor was in the range of 5.6 × 1010 to 3.9 × 10+ 13 min− 1 for miscanthus and 2.1 × 1016 to 7.7 × 1025 min− 1 for AHR.
Original languageEnglish
Article number4550
Pages (from-to)184-193
Number of pages10
JournalFuel Processing Technology
Volume138
Early online date21 Jul 2015
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2015

Bibliographical note

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Funder: European Commission FP7 DIBANET project “The Production of Sustainable Diesel-Miscible-Biofuels from the Residues and Wastes of Europe and Latin America”; (Grant number 227248–2).

Keywords

  • kinetics
  • acid hydrolysis residue
  • thermogravimetric analysis
  • activation energy
  • pre-exponential factor
  • isoconversional methods

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