Kinetic Analysis of Biomass and Comparison of its Chemical Compositions by Thermogravimetry, Wet and Experimental Furnace Methods

Abstract

Lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose are the major components of biomass. The chemical reactivities of the biomass are affected by the difference in chemical structures making the knowledge of their composition, essential to predict the efficiency of the biomass conversion process for utilizing bio-energy, which is of immense importance for successful commercialization of these processes and thus to gain energy security. Despite the presence of accurate and robust Wet Chemical methods, it is very difficult to implement these techniques commercially. Therefore, in this study the chemical composition of biomass has been determined by a simpler physical technique—Thermogravimetric Analysis (TG). The values obtained were correlated with chemical methods and it was found that TG predicted the holocellulose content with a relatively high accuracy while it underestimated the lignin content by a huge margin. The kinetic parameters of degradation of five biomass samples have also been reported in this study. This study also compared the mass loss profiles of the biomass in TG with their mass loss profiles in a furnace.