ISSN print edition: 0366-6352 ISSN electronic edition: 1336-9075 Registr. No.: MK SR 9/7 Published monthly

Kinetics of Biomass Thermal Decomposition

S. Ledakowicz and P. Stolarek

Department of Bioprocess Engineering, Faculty of Process and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Lodz, PL-93 005 Lodz

E-mail: stanleda@ck-sg.p.lodz.pl

Received: 29 March 2002

Abstract: As a representative of biomass, in particular the sewage sludge, the raw bacterial cellulose was chosen. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was employed in the investigation of thermal processing of the biomass. The experiments were carried out in the temperature range 30—1000ºC. Di erent values of heating rate from 2.5 to 20 K min⁻¹ were applied. In order to determine kinetics of thermal decomposition of the biomass derivative of TG curve (DTG) was deconvoluted, using Gauss pro le, into few fractions (lumps), each of which was represented by a single rst-order reaction. The rst-order kinetic parameters such as activation energy E_i and pre-exponential factor A_i were estimated. The high values of activation energy indicated the chemical reaction regime of thermal processing of the biomass.

Full paper in Portable Document Format: 566a378.pdf

Chemical Papers 56 (6) 378–381 (2002)