Some Optional Methods of Activation Energy Determination on Pyrolysis

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated two possible directions that help to provide new methods of determining activation energy in kinetic analysis during corn stover pyrolysis. Both of them take the general assumption as in most is conventional methods that activation energy E, preexponential factor A and kinetic model function f(α) are independent of different heating rates. The first direction follows Vyazovkin’s idea but constructs different target functions for minimization. The other direction produces simple explicit formulas that estimate E directly. The result displays good agreement with some well-known classical methods. It also provides an approximated relationship between heating rates β and the derivative of conversion degree \({{{\text{d}}\alpha } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{{\text{d}}\alpha } {{\text{d}}t}}} \right. \kern-0em} {{\text{d}}t}}\). This relationship will allow us to simulate \({{{\text{d}}\alpha } \mathord{\left/ {\vphantom {{{\text{d}}\alpha } {{\text{d}}t}}} \right. \kern-0em} {{\text{d}}t}}\) vs. \(\alpha \) curve at any desired heating rates.