Thermal interaction analysis of isolated hemicellulose and cellulose by kinetic parameters during biomass pyrolysis

Thermal interactions of isolated hemicellulose and cellulose were analyzed during biomass pyrolysis. Different from the previous researches focus on pyrolysis products, the current study paid attention to the kinetic parameters coupled with artificial intelligence optimization algorithm to explore whether the interactions of hemicellulose and cellulose could be ignored or not. A series of thermogravimetric experiments were conducted based on isolated hemicellulose, cellulose and their mixture at various heating rates. The experimental results showed that the peak locations of mixture pyrolysis exactly corresponded to the peak locations of isolated hemicellulose and cellulose. Furthermore, the kinetic parameters obtained from isolated hemicellulose and cellulose were applied to predict the pyrolysis behaviors of mixture, and the predicted results agreed well with experimental data. Eventually, it was speculated that the thermal interactions of isolated hemicellulose and cellulose could be ignored during the whole pyrolysis process from the point of kinetic parameters. Meanwhile, the pyrolysis behaviors of real biomass were compared with that of isolated hemicellulose and cellulose. Moreover, the effects of kinetic parameters on the thermogravimetric results were studied based on the global sensitivity analysis, indicating the activation energy and pre-exponential factor playing the most important role on the pyrolysis process of mixture. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.