Thermal behaviour of walnut shells by thermogravimetry with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis

Fangyu Fan; Han Li; Yuqiao Xu; Yun Liu; Zhifeng Zheng; Huan Kan

doi:10.1098/rsos.180331

Thermal behaviour of walnut shells by thermogravimetry with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis

R Soc Open Sci. 2018 Sep 12;5(9):180331. doi: 10.1098/rsos.180331. eCollection 2018 Sep.

Authors

Fangyu Fan^{1

2}, Han Li^{1

2}, Yuqiao Xu^{1

2}, Yun Liu^{1

2}, Zhifeng Zheng^{1

2}, Huan Kan^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Forest Resources Conservation and Utilisation in the Southwest Mountains of China, Ministry of Education, Southwest Forestry University, 650224 Kunming, Yunnan, People's Republic of China.
² School of Light Industry and Food Engineering, Southwest Forestry University, 650224 Kunming, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

The present study introduces thermogravimetry with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TG-GC-MS) at four different heating rates to investigate the activation energy and thermal degradation behaviour of walnut shell pyrolysis. The distributed activation energy model (DAEM) was applied to investigate the activation energy. According to values of the activation energy and the correlation coefficient by the DAEM, the activation energy (98.69-267.75 kJ mol^-1) and correlation coefficient (0.914-0.999) were determined for pyrolysis of walnut shells. GC-MS was performed to investigate the pyrolysis products from walnut shells at different critical temperature points. More than 20 different substances were identified at different temperatures from GC-MS results. With the increasing pyrolysis temperature, furan, furfural, benzene and long chain alkanes were successively identified in different GC-MS experimental results.

Keywords: DAEM; TG-GC-MS; activation energy; distributed activation energy model; pyrolysis; walnut shell.