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Thermogravimetric analysis of peat decomposition under different oxygen concentrations

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Abstract

Smoldering combustion of peat is of global concern as a natural hazard to consume sequestered carbon and form wide-area haze. It is affected by thermal decomposition kinetics of peat and the diffusion and availability of oxygen. In this work, thermal decomposition behavior of peat was investigated using thermogravimetric analysis under the atmosphere with different oxygen concentrations. The results showed that thermal decomposition process of peat could be divided into three stages: dehydration, oxidative pyrolysis of organic matters into volatiles and char, and oxidation of the generated char. The apparent activation energies of peat decomposition under different oxygen concentrations were calculated by model-free methods of Kissinger, FWO, Starink, Gyulai, and Friedman. A two-step reaction model was proposed to describe thermal decomposition kinetics of peat (excluding dehydration stage) and the effect of oxygen concentration on the kinetic parameters was discussed. These results provide basic data for smoldering modeling of peat.

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Abbreviations

TG:

Thermogravimetry

DTG:

Derivative thermogravimetry (K−1)

E, E 1 , E 2 :

Apparent activation energy (kJ mol−1)

R :

Ideal gas constant, 8.314 J K−1 mol−1)

A, A 1, A 2 :

Arrhenius frequency factor

T :

Absolute temperature (K)

β :

Heating rate of decomposition (K min−1)

k 1, k 2 :

Reaction rate coefficients

P :

The initial mass of the peat removed moisture and mineral content

D, V 1 , V 2 :

Product of reaction

V 1, V 2 :

The mass loss (gas mass) of two-step reaction, respectively

m 0 , m ∞ :

The mass of beginning and end of peat decomposition (g)

r 1, r 2 :

Dimensionless parameter defined by Eq. (5)

n 1, n 2 :

Reaction order

OF:

Objective function

RSQ:

R-Squared

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Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51176179 and 51120165001) and the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2012CB719702). Chen was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University (WK2320000020).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, University of Science and Technology of China, 230026, Hefei, Anhui, China

    Weitao Zhao, Haixiang Chen, Naian Liu & Jianjun Zhou

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  1. Weitao Zhao
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Correspondence to Haixiang Chen.

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Zhao, W., Chen, H., Liu, N. et al. Thermogravimetric analysis of peat decomposition under different oxygen concentrations. J Therm Anal Calorim 117, 489–497 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-014-3696-4

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