A detailed study of pyrolysis kinetics of elephant grass using thermogravimetric analysis

Elephant grass is a potential feedstock for bioenergy conversion and hence it pyrolysis kinetics need to be assessed. In this present work, pyrolysis of elephant grass has been studied using thermogravimetric analyzer. The kinetic parameters have been measured using popularly used methods, viz. Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) method for activation energy, Kissinger's equation for frequency factor and Criado method for reaction mechanism. Thermogravimetric analysis showed three distinct zones of thermal decomposition of the biomass. The activation energy calculated by KAS method had an average value 187.68 kJ/mol. Pre-exponential factor showed a high variation in the range of 4.6 x 10(8) - 1.8 x 10(18) s(-1). Finally, the analysis of solid state reaction mechanism by Criado method showed the process to be D2 (2-dimensonal diffusion) mechanism for conversion below 0.5 and R2 (2nd order random nucleation) mechanism for conversion values above 0.5.