In this work, the
combustion performance of Chlorella
vulgaris (CV), Dunaliella salina (DS), and Haematococcus pluvialis (HP) algal biochars was analyzed based on the multicomponent method.
The biochars were obtained via nonisothermal pyrolysis of raw algal
biomasses at three different heating rates (i.e., 30, 40, and 50 °C/min),
and biochar combustion was performed from 200 to 700 °C at a
heating rate of 5 °C/min. The complex oxidative reaction of algal
biochar was resolved into combined reactions of multiple pseudo-components
based on the peak deconvolution method using a bi-Gaussian model.
The activation energies (E
a) for each
pseudo-component (PC) of all biochar samples were calculated by the
Coats–Redfern isoconversional method and four kinetic models
(i.e., diffusion, nucleation, order-based, and shrinking core models).
The results showed that the highest E
a values were predicted by the diffusion model. Except that the E
a for the first PC of CV biochar decreased by
16.45%, the E
a values for all other biochar
samples generally increased with increasing the pyrolysis heating
rate. Moreover, when the diffusion model was used, the E
a for the second PC of CV biochar increased by 50.87%,
that for the first PC of DS biochar increased by 16.85%, and those
for the first and third PCs of HP biochar increased by 4.66 and 11.66%,
respectively. In addition, the combustibility index (Sn
) was evaluated based on the ignition and burnout
temperatures as well as the mean and maximum weight loss rates. Generally,
the combustion performance of all biochar samples was good at a low
temperature but deteriorated toward a high temperature. As the pyrolysis
heating rate increases, an overall increase in the combustion quality
was also seen for the second PC of CV biochar and the first PCs of
DS and HP biochars because their Sn
increased
from 2.70 × 10–15 to 3.07 × 10–15 °C–5, 2.53 × 10–13 to 3.88 × 10–13 °C–5, and 3.00 × 10–13 to 3.26 × 10–13 °C–5, respectively.
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