Oxidation of partially decomposed wood: Experimental investigation and kinetic analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study experimentally the oxidation process of wood of different degrees of thermal conversion. We compared experimental data of thermogravimetric analysis in the oxidizing environment of raw wood, cellulose, lignin, and wood samples of different degrees of thermal conversion. Thermally treated wood samples were obtained by heating raw pine wood in an inert atmosphere to a given temperature (250, 300, 350, 400, 500 °C), followed by rapid quenching in water. All obtained samples were studied by the thermal analysis combined with mass spectrometry (TGA-MS) in inert and oxidizing environments; technical (moisture content, ash content, volatile yield, or W, A, V) and elemental analysis (C, H, O) data were obtained. We propose a new method for kinetic analysis of biomass decomposition: the change in the leading decomposition mechanisms is monitored by the change in the composition of the detected products. Differences between the thermochemical behavior of biomass, its individual components (cellulose and lignin), and their thermal degradation products are discussed.