Thermogravimetric analysis and kinetic modelling studies of selected agro-residues and biodiesel industry wastes for pyrolytic conversion to bio-oil

IEA's recognition of international trading prospect of pyrolysis oil as a biomass intermediate to bridge the demand and supply gap of biomass resources across the globe is likely to accelerate large-scale development of pyrolysis technology in coming years. The complex nature of pyrolysis reactions however have led to the development of numerous kinetic models which show a wide variation in activation energy and other kinetic parameters for the same biomass feedstock. This also leads to complexity in reactor designing and process upscaling. In the present study, eight biomass, including agro-residues and non-edible oil seed residues from Indian biodiesel industries, have been subjected to TGA analysis and the activation energies are calculated and compared using different models.