Thermal and kinetic analysis of diverse biomass fuels under different reaction environment: A way forward to renewable energy sources

Farooq Sher, Sania Z. Iqbal, Hao Liu, Muhammad Imran, Colin E. Snape

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    123 Citations (Scopus)
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    Abstract

    This study investigates the thermal and kinetic analysis of six diverse biomass fuels, in order to provide valuable information for power and energy generation. Pyrolytic, combustion and kinetic analyses of barley straw, miscanthus, waste wood, wheat straw, short rotation coppicing (SRC) willow and wood pellet were examined by non-isothermal thermogravimetry analyser (TGA), differential thermogravimetric (DTG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) techniques. Biomass fuels were thermally degraded under N2, air, CO2 and the selected oxy-fuel (30% O2/70% CO2) reaction environments. The thermal degradation under inert N2 and CO2 atmospheres showed an almost identical rate of weight loss (R), reactivity (RM × 103) and activation energy (Ea) profiles. Similar profiles for R, RM and Ea were observed for the environments under air (21% O2/79% N2) and the oxy-fuel combustion. Results indicated that the thermal decomposition rate for biomass fuels in an oxidising condition was faster than in an inert atmosphere, favourable effect on thermal degradation of biomass fuels was observed when oxygen content increased from 21 to 30%. Higher activation energies with lower reactivity were observed for the biomass fuels that have low cellulosic contents as compared to the other fuels. Regression analysis confirmed that the reaction order 0.5 modelled fitted well for all biomass samples. All these findings will provide valuable information and promote the advancement of future researches in this field.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number112266
    JournalEnergy Conversion and Management
    Volume203
    Early online date20 Nov 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2020

    Bibliographical note

    NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Energy Conversion and Management. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Energy Conversion and Management, 203, (2020) DOI: 10.1016/j.enconman.2019.112266

    © 2019, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

    Keywords

    • Renewable energy
    • Biomass
    • Oxy-fuel combustion
    • Activation energy
    • Heat flow kinetics and Carbon emissions

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Energy Engineering and Power Technology
    • Fuel Technology
    • Nuclear Energy and Engineering
    • Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

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