Combustion kinetics and fuel performance of tackifying resins by TG-FTIR and DFT analysis

Abstract

Combustion kinetics and fuel performance of tackifying resins such as glycerol ester of colophony (GEC), glycerol ester of hydrogenated colophony (GEHC), C9 petroleum resin (C9PR) and hydrogenated C9 petroleum resin (HC9PR) were studied. Non-isothermal thermal analysis was performed in an air atmosphere, and the combustion characteristic, kinetic and thermodynamic parameters were calculated. Results show that all the resins studied have good combustion performance and environmental characteristics, and their experimental calorific values are 1.15–1.54 times of standard coal-equivalent (29.31 MJ/kg), indicating that tackifying resins and their corresponding wastes are promising fuel for generating energy. Furthermore, based on the isoconversional and master plots methods, it was found that the combustion of different resins was a kinetically complicated reaction, but the R3 model had an acceptable fitting effect in the whole combustion process. TG-FTIR and density functional theory (DFT) results demonstrate that colophony-based resins tend to degrade/burn the branched chains first and then the tricyclic phenanthrene structures, while petroleum resins degrade/burn the CC bonds on the backbone first and then the aromatic compounds, and the volatiles are mainly composed of H2O, CH4, CO2, CO, aromatic compounds and carbonyl derivatives.