Determination of Cocombustion Kinetic Parameters for Bituminous Coal and Pinus Sawdust Blends

Abstract

Cocombustion of bituminous coal (HC) and Pinus sawdust (PS) was investigated in this paper with the aim of determining the kinetic parameters relevant to cocombustion reactions of their fuel blends. PS was used because it is a waste biomass product capable of generating energy. Motivated by the need to partly substitute HC used in existing boilers with PS, the optimum kinetic parameters at different blending ratios were thus investigated with the ultimate goal of diversifying the energy portfolio for these boilers. Blended samples were prepared with a PS substitution by mass ranging from 0 to 30%, thus producing five samples, namely:100HC, 90HC10PS, 80HC20PS, 70HC30PS, and 100PS. A simultaneous thermogravimetric analyzer was used to investigate the degradation of the fuel samples under a synthetic air atmosphere using 5, 12.5, and 20 °C/min heating rates. The kinetic parameters were evaluated using the distributed activation energy model (DAEM) due to its ability to evaluate complex parallel chemical mechanisms. The influential homogenous volatile combustion and heterogenous combustion stages produced an increasing trend for activation energy (Ea) with increased PS (100HC to 70HC30PS) from an average of 61.80–104.34 kJ/mol while the pre-exponential factor increased from 1.31 × 105 to 6.52 × 108. Generally, blending of HC with PS did not produce a linear variation of the kinetic parameters; thus, by using various plots, an optimum blending ratio of 80HC20PS was deduced.