Contribuição ao estudo cinético e balanço energético da pirólise autotérmica da palha de cana-de-açúcar através de análises termogravimétricas e calorimetria

Abstract

In this work, it was studied the kinetics of sugarcane straw pyrolysis and the required heat for the biomass degradation using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) under oxidative and inert atmosphere.The biomass characterization was performed using ultimate and elemental analyses, infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), lignine, holocellulose and cellulose quantification. The activation energy (Ea), required heat for biomass pyrolysis and percentage of remnant residues after biomass degradation were evaluated in base of a preliminary study using different oxygen percentages at increasing temperature using three heating rate 5, 10 and 20 ºC/min (50 mL/min). Moreover, in the base of the obtained results, it was performed an experiment planning (Central Compound Planning CCP) in order to optimize the biomass pyrolysis process (sugarcane straw). The biomass decomposition process occurred between 250 and 515ºC using 3% O2 (95% weight loss after pyrolysis process), between 250 and 501ºC using 20% O2 (93% weight loss) and between 250 and 600ºC under inert atmosphere (92% weight loss). The Ea values for the sugarcane straw pyrolysis were obtained in the base of Flynn-Ozawa-Wall (FOW) model. In this context, the lowest Ea value for sugarcane straw pyrolysis was 101-130 kJ/mol when 3% O2 was used. On the other hand, using 20% O2 in a heating rate of 20ºC/min (50 ml/min) for the sugarcane straw pyrolysis, the required heat was the lowest, 161 kJ/kg. In this case, the pyrolysis process needed less energy for the entire process. So, according with the adjusted surface analyses showed that, under the evaluated conditions, the lowest required heat occurred when the percentage of O2 was around 10% and the heating rate increased independently of the used total gas flow. Nevertheless, in the case of remnant residues percentage, this value was the lowest when the heating rate decreased and the oxygen percentage increased. In the analysis of two results showed that the variables in the central level (X1, X2 and X3 equal 0) resulted in optimizing the pyrolysis process to heat required and % remaining residue from about 181.74 kJ/kg and 9, 89%, respectively. It was concluded then that, within the ranges studied, the oxidative pyrolysis was presented as one of the best practicable means for the production of bio-oil through lignocellulosic biomass, as currently investigated conditions showed that the best values for achieving the process bench scale are: oxygen concentrations and rates of heat around the central 10% and 25°C/min, respectively, regardless of the total flow of gas to the technology of pyrolysis, generating a system autothermal, optimizing and enabling the process.