Kinetics of the pyrolysis of oil sands based upon thermogravimetric analysis

Abstract

In this work, the pyrolysis kinetics of oil sands were determined based upon the TG-DTG curves. Using the single-step reaction model, the parameters of thermal decomposition kinetics of oil sands, such as the activation energy E0 = 186.14 kJ/mol, reaction order n = 5.21 and pre-exponential factor A0 = 1.56E13 s−1, were obtained. The activation energy values of 185.05 kJ/mol and 162.95 kJ/mol were received by using the Friedman and KAS method, respectively. The result of the most probable mechanism function is not perfectly matched with the common kinetic model, the first order reaction model is not suitable for the study of oil sands’ pyrolysis. Using different density probability functions, such as Logistic, Lognormal, Gaussian, Rayleigh and Weibull, the distribution of apparent activation energy of the pyrolysis of oil sands was studied. The Akaike Information Criteria and the calculated kinetic parameters show that the Weibull model is the most suitable model for studying the pyrolysis of oil sands.