Study of thermal degradation of biomass wastes generated from palm oil milling plant

Abstract

Thermal decomposition of empty fruit bunch (EFB), palm kernel shell (PKS) and palm oil milling effluent sludge (POMES) have been investigated. Thermogravimetry analysis was employed to determine the proximate analysis of the samples, and then to study the characteristic of the thermal degradation. Proximate analysis of the sample was conducted by introduce the samples into the TGA and run it under the nitrogen environment from 25 to 800 °C. The gas was shifted to oxygen to let the sample burn and left their ash. Thermal degradation studies were carried out by heating up the samples in TGA from 25 to 800 °C at different heating ratio. Second order kinetic model was applied to determine the characteristic of the degradation. As the results, the heating rate has no significant effect for the activation energy, which has value range from 31 to 64 kJ/mol. Lowest activation energy was achieved for POME at heating rate of 10 °C/min (31.1 kJ/mol), while highest activation energy was for EFB at heating rate of 10 °C/min (63.6 kJ/mol).