Thermo‐chemical conversion of pre‐treated cucumber peel

Abstract

In this study, cucumber peel (CP) was treated with Calcium Hydroxide i.e. Ca(OH)2 and its thermal behavior was examined. The pre‐treated cucumber peel (PTCP) was thermally degraded mainly through three steps; first, moisture and light volatile compounds loss (30–132°C); second, primary devolatilization (132 to 337°C) involving intense degradation with mainly re‐formation process and third and final, secondary reactions (337 to 800°C). Lower PTCP activation energy (192.77–183.33 KJ/mol) reflects its easy thermal conversion initiation. The non‐condensable compounds (CO2 & CH4) and condensable products (H2O, CH3CH2OH, CH3COOH, C=C, C6H5OH, HCOOH) were found as 29.75% and 70.25% respectively determined by TG‐FTIR analysis. While, with temperature, relative concentration of condensable compounds decrease significantly and found as 61.38% and 42.5% at lower and higher temperature respectively. By Py/GC–MS analysis, presence of the high energy optimizing compounds and valuable chemicals, i.e. toluene (5.12%), benzene (4.31%) and phenols (27.38%) was confirmed. All these datasets shows that pre‐treatment of CP with Ca(OH)2 might be suitable approach to produce Bioenergy and Bio‐chemicals.