Thermal decomposition of rice straw from rice basin of India to improve energy-pollution nexus: Kinetic modeling and thermodynamic analysis

Abstract

Sustainable rice straw management in Northern India is a significant issue for farmers. Pyrolysis is one of the suitable options to create value addition and contributes to the circular economy. In this work, the thermal decomposition of rice straw at three heating rates 5, 10, and 15 °C/min was studied to evaluate the kinetics parameters, including activation energy and pre-exponential factor. Moreover, Coats-Redfern integral, Doyle, and Distributed activation energy model have been preferred to analyze the kinetic data. The results indicate that rice straw pyrolysis takes place in three different regions, including dehydration, active, and passive pyrolysis. The differential thermogravimetric graph demonstrates that the temperature peak at maximum weight loss changes with the heating rate. The activation energy obtained from Coats-Redfern was varied in the range of 51.12–58.75 kJ/mol. Activation energy derived from Doyle and Distributed activation energy model was 395.06 and 387.99 kJ/mol, which was comparable. The ∆H shows the energy gap between the reagent and the activated complex. The ∆S had a positive value, which reveals that the process is spontaneous.