Kinetics of devolatilisation of forestry wastes from thermogravimetric analysis

The great potential of Maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) wastes in the middle regions of Spain has motivated an increasing interest about the energy use of this material, either through combustion or gasification processes. Samples of these biomass wastes have been analysed by thermogravimetry under both inert and oxidant atmospheres, from room temperature up to 1100 K, at different heating rates: 10, 30, 40, 50 and 60 K min(-1). An estimation of the proximate analysis of the samples was made from combination of both resulting weight loss curves. The devolatilisation process of the samples was divided into three non-interacting mass-loss events described as parallel first-order reactions, being the first event identified as the moisture loss process, the second one as the hemicellulose and cellulose decomposition process and the third one as that of lignin decomposition. A fitting algorithm to obtain the kinetic parameters permitted a good agreement with experimental results, as well as a good discrimination of the effect of the heating rate. Due to the non-homogeneous nature of the tested samples, the use of other conventional methods for obtaining the kinetic parameters has been proved to be inadequate. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.