Physicochemical analysis and kinetic study of orange bagasse at higher heating rates

Abstract

The present work investigates the thermal degradation behaviour of orange bagasse that was pyrolysed in a thermogravimetric analyser at four heating rates 25, 50, 75 and 100 °C min−1 respectively under a constant N2 flow rate of 0.1 L min−1. Along with thermal degradation, the physicochemical properties of orange bagasse were determined by proximate, ultimate, compositional analysis and high heating value. The analysis results indicated that the orange bagasse has low moisture and high volatile matter content which gave a better HHV of 17.26 MJ kg−1. Other analysis like FT-IR, EDX, XRD, SEM and BET also helped in investigating the physicochemical properties of orange bagasse. Using three different kinetic models namely Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS), Ozawa–Flynn–Wall (OFW) and Coats-Redfern the kinetic parameters like apparent activation energy (Ea) and reaction order (n), correlation values (R2) and pre-exponential factor (A) were determined by optimising the thermogravimetric data of orange bagasse. The two kinetic models KAS and OFW methods helped in calculating the mean apparent activation energy of the orange bagasse which was 112.90 and 123.24 kJ mol−1 respectively. The experimental data were in good agreement with the orange bagasse kinetics simulated data. From the results of the above analysis and kinetic study, it can be said that the orange bagasse has the potential to become a pyrolysis feedstock.