Thermal degradation of ligno-cellulosic fuels: DSC and TGA studies

Abstract

The scope of this work was to show the utility of thermal analysis and calorimetric experiments to study the thermal oxidative degradation of Mediterranean scrubs. We investigated the thermal degradation of four species; DSC and TGA were used under air sweeping to record oxidative reactions in dynamic conditions. Heat released and mass loss are important data to be measured for wildland fires modelling purpose and fire hazard studies on ligno-cellulosic fuels. Around 638 K and 778 K, two dominating and overlapped exothermic peaks were recorded in DSC and individualized using a experimental and numerical separation. This stage allowed obtaining the enthalpy variation of each exothermic phenomenon. As an application, we propose to classify the fuels according to the heat released and the rate constant of each reaction. TGA experiments showed under air two successive mass loss around 638 K and 778 K. Both techniques are useful in order to measure ignitability, combustibility and sustainability of forest fuels.

Thermal Degradation and Morphological Aspects of Four Wood Species Used in Lumber Industry

“…According to Yang et al (2007) hemicelluloses presents an exothermal peak at 275 °C. Leroy et al (2006) observed an exothermal peak at 505 °C assigned to lignin degradation of four wood species from Mediterranean. In a recent study, Werner et al (2014) reported that hemicelluloses presented an endothermic peak at around 300-330 °C.…”

Properties of Hydrochar as Function of Feedstock, Reaction Conditions and Post-Treatment

“…The hydrochars formed are analyzed with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and FTIR. TGA is a common method to study biomass [11][12][13][14] and hydrochar composition [13,[15][16][17] and is here mainly used to detect residual cellulose from incomplete conversion of the biomass. Infrared spectra are often used to characterize hydrochar via the presence of characteristic, IR-active, functional groups (see for example: [18]).…”

Kinetic investigation on the smouldering combustion of boreal peat

“…The ultimate analysis results are shown in Table 1. Before performing this analysis, peat materials were ovendried for 24 hours at 333 K [15]. The deshydrated samples were stored in airtight plastic containers and send for laboratory testing.…”

“…In this study, the pyrolytic behaviour of the different kinds of peats was investigated with a thermogravimetric analyzer (Pyris® 1 TGA Perkin Elmer®) in air atmosphere (30 mL/min) at temperatures ranging from 500 to 900 K. As the study was focused on thermal degradation samples were oven-dried for 24 hours at 333 K [15]. Dry samples were then kept to the desiccator to preserve samples from ambient air humidity.…”