Estimating of pyrolysis kinetic parameters of cellulose by the peak property method

Pyrolysis has drawn much attention because of its ability to acquire fuel and valuable chemicals from biomass. Since dry biomass fuels typically are comprised of about 50 wt % cellulose, the study of the pyrolysis kinetics of cellulose is essential to the process design of biomass pyrolysis. The pyrolysis kinetic parameters of cellulose estimated by the Peak Property Method (PPM) are described. The PPM provides the reaction order of 1.5 for cellulose pyrolysis reaction, thus offering an insight that the first-order kinetics proposed by most previous studies would be inappropriate. However, disparity of activation energy between model-free methods and the PPM indicates that the power law equation would be improper to represent the conversion function of cellulose pyrolysis. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 228th ACS National Meeting (Philadelphia, PA 8/22-26/2004).