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Kinetic Analysis of Biomass and Comparison of its Chemical Compositions by Thermogravimetry, Wet and Experimental Furnace Methods

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Abstract

Lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose are the major components of biomass. The chemical reactivities of the biomass are affected by the difference in chemical structures making the knowledge of their composition, essential to predict the efficiency of the biomass conversion process for utilizing bio-energy, which is of immense importance for successful commercialization of these processes and thus to gain energy security. Despite the presence of accurate and robust Wet Chemical methods, it is very difficult to implement these techniques commercially. Therefore, in this study the chemical composition of biomass has been determined by a simpler physical technique—Thermogravimetric Analysis (TG). The values obtained were correlated with chemical methods and it was found that TG predicted the holocellulose content with a relatively high accuracy while it underestimated the lignin content by a huge margin. The kinetic parameters of degradation of five biomass samples have also been reported in this study. This study also compared the mass loss profiles of the biomass in TG with their mass loss profiles in a furnace.

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Abbreviations

A :

Pre-exponential factor

B, C, D :

Constants

dw/dt :

Ratio of change in weight to change in time

E :

Activation energy

k :

Reaction constant

n :

Order of the reaction

R :

Universal gas constant

R2 :

Correlation coefficient

t :

Time

w :

Weight at any time

w f :

Final weight at the end of the stage

w o :

Initial weight at the start of the stage

x :

Sample weight

ASTM:

American Society for Testing and Materials

DTG:

Derivative thermogravimetry

H-NMR:

Hydrogen 1-nuclear magnetic resonance

HR-TGA:

High-resolution thermogravimetric analysis

MMT:

Million metric tonne

PUT:

Pyrolytic unit thermographs

TAPPI:

Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry

TG:

Thermogravimetry

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Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to ‘Department of Science and Technology, New-Delhi, India’ for financially supporting this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Energy and Environmental Science and Technology, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, 620015, Tamil Nadu, India

    Reeshab Goenka, Naveen Kumar Gupta & Navneet Kumar Biyahut

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, 620015, Tamil Nadu, India

    Prakash Parthasarathy & Sheeba Narayanan

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  1. Reeshab Goenka
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  2. Prakash Parthasarathy
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Correspondence to Sheeba Narayanan.

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Goenka, R., Parthasarathy, P., Gupta, N.K. et al. Kinetic Analysis of Biomass and Comparison of its Chemical Compositions by Thermogravimetry, Wet and Experimental Furnace Methods. Waste Biomass Valor 6, 989–1002 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12649-015-9402-3

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