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Kinetics of pyrolysis of some biomasses widely available in Brazil

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Abstract

Biomass conversion via thermal processes to generate energy will be an important part of the future energy landscape. The objective of this study was to determine the kinetic parameters of five types of eucalyptus wood derived from different clones, sugarcane bagasse, elephant grass, bamboo and fibers of coconut fruit. The framework to describe the kinetic pyrolysis consists of a fuel model including four constituents, namely hemicelluloses, cellulose, lignin and extractives. Each pseudo-component was converted via two competing reactions into volatile and char. A statistical fit was achieved with mass loss rate data, obtained from the pyrolysis modeling and the thermogravimetric analysis, providing satisfactory statistical variance. In the end of the kinetic parameters optimization, the activation energies for reaction of hemicelluloses, cellulose and lignin were obtained as 179.98, 130.0 and 40 kJ mol−1, respectively, whereas the decomposition of the pseudo-components resulted in relatively similar values of pre-exponential factor for all biomasses evaluated. The experimental results and kinetic parameters provide useful data to improve design of thermochemical conversion units.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank CAPES and CNPq under Process Number 490243/2012-6 for the financial support for this work, and Prof. Maria Irene Yoshida for his knowledge and technical support in the thermogravimetric analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, MG, 31270-901, Brazil

    Elém Patrícia Alves Rocha, Idalmo Montenegro de Oliveira & Marcelo Cardoso

  2. Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT), 53851, Lappeenranta, Finland

    Ekaterina Sermyagina & Esa Vakkilainen

  3. Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), Viçosa, MG, 36.570-000, Brazil

    Jorge Luiz Colodette

Authors
  1. Elém Patrícia Alves Rocha
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  2. Ekaterina Sermyagina
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  3. Esa Vakkilainen
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  4. Jorge Luiz Colodette
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  5. Idalmo Montenegro de Oliveira
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  6. Marcelo Cardoso
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Correspondence to Elém Patrícia Alves Rocha.

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Rocha, E.P.A., Sermyagina, E., Vakkilainen, E. et al. Kinetics of pyrolysis of some biomasses widely available in Brazil. J Therm Anal Calorim 130, 1445–1454 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-017-6138-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-017-6138-2

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