Precise Depolymerization of Poly(3-hydoxybutyrate) by Pyrolysis

Abstract

The study concerns the pyrolysis kinetics of agricultural wastes, corn straw (CS) and rice husk (RH). Thermogravimetric experiments were carried out in a thermogravimetric analyzer under inert conditions, and operated at different heating rates ranging from 5 to 40. K/min. As the increment of heating rates, the variations of characteristic parameters from the TG-DTG curves were determined. Iso-conversional Starink approach and Avrami theory were used to evaluate the kinetic parameters, including apparent activation energy and reaction order. For the range of conversion fraction investigated (20-80%), the apparent activation energy of CS initially increased from 98.715 to 148.062. kJ/mol and then decreased to 144.387. kJ/mol afterwards, whilst the apparent activation energy of RH increased gradually from 50.492 to 88.994. kJ/mol. With varied temperatures (517-697. K), the corresponding value of reaction order was increased from 0.288 and 0.359 to 0.441 and 0.692, along with a decrease to 0.306 and 0.445, respectively. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.