Abstract
Peat is a resource used for heat and energy, particularly in countries where peat is abundant and conventional fuels are not available. Some countries have made extensive use of peat resources to produce electricity and heat in addition to light hydrocarbons. By doing so, they were able to reduce the cost of importing fossil fuels. To the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of a detailed description of the peat oxidation process in the presence of other substances. Herein, the process of peat oxidation was studied in-depth by means of thermal analysis in the presence of iron tallate acting as a catalytic agent. Differential scanning calorimetry and thermogravimetric analysis demonstrated an oil-like oxidation behavior during the combustion of the used peat. The process of peat oxidation includes two main regions: low-temperature oxidation (LTO), which occurs during the oxidation of light hydrocarbons, followed by the so-called high-temperature oxidation (HTO), which includes the oxidation of the obtained coke-like product. Moreover, the application of non-isothermal kinetics experiments based on the isoconversional and model approach principle have confirmed the role of 2% iron tallate in peat mass by improving the oxidation rate at low- and high-temperature oxidation (HTO) regions. The results obtained from this study have proven that the added catalyst improves efficiency with regards to the energy activation in the process by leading to its significant decrease from 110.8 ± 7.8 kJ/mol to 81.8 ± 7.5 kJ/mol for LTO and from 157.8 ± 19.1 kJ/mol to 137.6 ± 9.3 kJ/mol for HTO. These findings clearly confirm the improvement in the rate of the process by shifting the LTO and HTO peaks to lower regions in the presence of the catalyst. These results further emphasize the possible impact which could be generated by the application of thermally enhanced oil recovery methods on peat development and exploitation.
Highlights
Peat is among the most commonly discussed types of fossil fuel alternatives for improving the world’s production of hydrocarbons and fuels due to the shortage of unconventional hydrocarbon reserves [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The process of peat oxidation includes two main regions: low-temperature oxidation (LTO), which occurs during the oxidation of light hydrocarbons, followed by the so-called high-temperature oxidation (HTO), which includes the oxidation of the obtained coke-like product
This work describes the behavior of the peat oxidation process in addition to its kinetic aspect by means of thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetric analysis
Summary
Peat is among the most commonly discussed types of fossil fuel alternatives for improving the world’s production of hydrocarbons and fuels due to the shortage of unconventional hydrocarbon reserves [1,2,3,4,5,6]. In order to face the issues resulting from fossil fuel use and shortages, alternative energy sources such as peat are of particular importance [7,8,9,10]. Researchers have widely shown interest in peat production and exploitation, there is still much work to be carried out regarding the mechanism of peat thermal degradation and energy transfer from these resources [11,12]. Agriculture, and forests are, decaying, resulting in environmental problems and toxic gas emissions [13,14]
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