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Kinetic study of torrefaction of oil palm shell, mesocarp and empty fruit bunch

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Abstract

The understanding of kinetic parameters and torrefaction mechanism is required for the design of the operational equipment for biomass torrefaction. This study presents the results from thermogravimetric analyses of oil palm shell (PS), mesocarp (MF) and empty fruit bunches (EFB) under inert atmosphere mimicking torrefaction. Torrefaction was studied isothermally within the range of 200–300 °C to analyze the kinetics of this process. The kinetic data were used to predict the torrefaction performance of all the three oil palm biomass using a two-stage decomposition mechanism that closely matches the experimental data. The activation energies corresponding to the first-stage reactions are 39.22, 28.61 and 60.47 kJ mol−1 for EFB, MF and PS, respectively. Activation energy for EFB is highest for the second-stage reactions at 35.18 kJ mol−1 followed by PS at 25.49 kJ mol−1 and MF at 25.49 kJ mol−1.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding support from Monash University for this work under the Major Grant EM1-11 and Ministry of Education (MOE) Malaysia under the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS) FRGS/1/2012/ST01/MUSM/03/2 and Taylor’s University Major Grant TRGS/MFS2/2013/SOE/006. We are also thankful to Dr. Luguang Chen for her technical assistance with the experiments and useful advice in this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Discipline of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, Monash University Malaysia, 47500, Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Jiuan-Jing Chew & Siek-Ting Yong

  2. School of Engineering, Taylor’s University, 47500, Bandar Sunway, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

    Veena Doshi

  3. Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Clayton, VIC, 3800, Australia

    Sankar Bhattacharya

  4. Faculty of Engineering, Computing, and Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

    Jiuan-Jing Chew

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  1. Jiuan-Jing Chew
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  2. Veena Doshi
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  3. Siek-Ting Yong
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  4. Sankar Bhattacharya
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Correspondence to Veena Doshi.

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Chew, JJ., Doshi, V., Yong, ST. et al. Kinetic study of torrefaction of oil palm shell, mesocarp and empty fruit bunch. J Therm Anal Calorim 126, 709–715 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-5518-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-016-5518-3

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