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Combustion characteristics of typical model components in solid waste on a macro-TGA

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Abstract

The combustion characteristics of nine typical model components (PE, PET, PVC, PS, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, pectin and starch) in municipal solid waste were experimentally investigated on a custom-designed macro-thermal gravimetric analyzer (macro-TGA) at three heating rates of 10, 20 and 30 °C min−1. The combustion characteristics of biomass components (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, pectin and starch) were a little more complex than those of plastics (PET, PET, PVC and PS), which indicated that combustion was related to not only proximate analyses results, but also the chemical structure and specific chemical reactions. With the increase in the heating rates, the decomposition of all samples except for lignin was delayed. The main peak temperature of 20 °C min−1 was 30–55 °C higher than that of 10 °C min−1 and 20–40 °C and lower than that of 30 °C min−1 on macro-TGA. Some adjacent peaks in the differential thermogravimetric curves moved closer to each other or overlapped together. The residues of biomass components rose evidently with the increase in the heating rate from 10 to 20 °C min−1, while the plastic components almost burned out during combustion. The kinetics analysis based on Flynn–Wall–Ozawa method was used to calculate the activation energies of the samples. The activation energies of biomass components on the macro-TGA were mostly below 50 kJ mol−1, whereas those of plastic components were mainly between 40 and 140 kJ mol−1.

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Acknowledgements

The financial supports from the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFB0603601) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91434119) are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University-University of Waterloo Joint Research Center for Micro/Nano Energy and Environment Technology, Department of Energy and Power Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Jundian Luo, Qinghai Li, Aihong Meng, Yanqiu Long & Yanguo Zhang

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  1. Jundian Luo
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  2. Qinghai Li
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  3. Aihong Meng
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  4. Yanqiu Long
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Correspondence to Qinghai Li.

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Luo, J., Li, Q., Meng, A. et al. Combustion characteristics of typical model components in solid waste on a macro-TGA. J Therm Anal Calorim 132, 553–562 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-017-6909-9

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