Kinetic modeling of thermal decomposition of sugarcane bagasse in the inert gas environment

Abstract

Sugarcane bagasse was characterized by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) with the different heating rates, and nitrogen carrier from 30 to 800 oC. Through decreasing the sample's mass by temperature, the stage of thermal decomposition could be determined. Specifically, there were three stages of decomposition including moisture escape stage, decomposition of cellulose stage, hemicellulose and lignin decomposition stage. On the other hand, based on the results of TGA the activation energy of decomposition process was determined by the inverse of the Flynn-Wall-Ozawa (FWO) method and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) method. The calculated results were compared with the activation energy by the Coats-Redfern method and Criado method in order to find the kinetics of bagasse pyrolysis process. Accordingly, when the conversion of reaction was lower than 75 %, corresponding to the decomposing process of hemicellulose and cellulose, the thermal decomposing process of bagasse obeyed diffusion kinetics of model D2, D3 and D4.