Prediction of Pyrolysis Gas Composition Based on the Gibbs Equation and TGA Analysis

Abstract

Conventional methods used to determine pyrolysis gas composition are based on chemical kinetics. The mechanism of those reactions is often unknown, which makes the calculations more difficult. Solving complex chemical reactions’ kinetics involving a nonlinear set of equations is CPU time demanding. An alternative approach is based on the Gibbs free energy minimization method. It requires only the initial composition and operation parameters as the input data, for example, temperature and pressure. In this paper, the method for calculating the pyrolytic gas composition from biogenic fuels has been presented, and the thermogravimetric experimental results have been adopted to determine the total gas yield. The studied problem has been reduced to the optimization method with the use of the Lagrange multipliers. This solution procedure is advantageous since it does not require knowledge of the reaction mechanism. The obtained results are in good agreement with experimental data, demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed method.