A complete two-parameter kinetic model to describe the thermal pretreatment of biomasses

Abstract

This study proposes a generalized approach to investigate the kinetics of thermal degradation of biomasses. The main purpose of this study aims to exploit the potentialities of the “model-free” methods in setting up an innovative computational procedure to completely describe the kinetics of thermal degradation processes involving organic materials and in particular biomasses. The proposed kinetic model enhances the features of the consolidated “isoconversional” procedures, conventionally limited only to activation energy determination, by introducing a new kinetic parameter (φα) in replacement of both the Arrhenius pre-exponential factor A and the f(a) reaction function. The usefulness of the model is achieved by implementing a suitable computational procedure based on an explicit Euler scheme easy executable. The achieved result provides an effective “two-parameter” kinetic model replacing, therefore, the conventional kinetic triplet modelling scheme. The novelty of the proposed approach is that it can be applied to study the thermal degradation of biomasses when submitted to different thermal pathways, isothermal or not and, furthermore, it can work as well in a predictive manner. Considering the limited amount of the required experimental data and the simplified form of the representative kinetic equation, this model looks particularly attractive to be generalized and extended to describe the kinetics of thermal processes involving whichever kind of organic and biologic substrates.