Assessment of the thermal decomposition kinetics of empty fruit bunch, kernel shell and their blend

Yesid Javier Rueda-Ordóñez; Carlos Junior Arias-Hernández; Julián Fernando Manrique-Pinto; Paola Gauthier-Maradei; Waldir Antônio Bizzo

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121923

Assessment of the thermal decomposition kinetics of empty fruit bunch, kernel shell and their blend

Bioresour Technol. 2019 Nov:292:121923. doi: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121923. Epub 2019 Jul 30.

Authors

Yesid Javier Rueda-Ordóñez¹, Carlos Junior Arias-Hernández², Julián Fernando Manrique-Pinto², Paola Gauthier-Maradei³, Waldir Antônio Bizzo⁴

Affiliations

¹ GIEMA Research Group, School of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Carrera 27 Calle 9, Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia. Electronic address: yjruedao@uis.edu.co.
² GIEMA Research Group, School of Mechanical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Carrera 27 Calle 9, Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia.
³ INTERFASE Research Group, School of Chemical Engineering, Universidad Industrial de Santander, Carrera 27 Calle 9, Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia.
⁴ School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Campinas, Rua Mendeleyev 200, Campinas, SP 13083-860, Brazil.

PMID: 31404752
DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.121923

Abstract

In this work, were studied the thermal and kinetic characteristics of the palm kernel shell (PKS) and empty fruit bunch (EFB) from the African oil palm. Experiments in the inert atmosphere were carried out in a thermogravimetric analyzer. In the kinetic analysis were applied the one-step reaction through iso-conversion methods, mechanism of independent parallel reactions (MIPR), and mechanism of consecutive reactions (MCR). The one-step reaction mechanism overestimated the thermal decomposition of all samples; however, the best was the EFB. The MIPR showed to be representative of the thermal decomposition of all samples, and the proposed correlations between the pre-exponential factor and the heating rate improved the accuracy of the model. The MCR analysis showed that using the same kinetic parameters applied in the MIPR does not affect reliability. Finally, as a conclusion, blending PKS with EFB increase 5% heating value and decrease 50% ash content.

Keywords: Biomass; Combustion; Model-free; Pyrolysis; Thermogravimetry.

MeSH terms

Atmosphere*
Fruit*
Kinetics
Reproducibility of Results
Thermogravimetry