Study of thermo-chemical kinetics of raw and pre-treated industrial lingocellulosic waste biomass and coal blends during pyrolysis /

Abstract

Coal co-pyrolysis with sustainable power source, for example, biomass like wood squander, rice husk and wheat straw etc. could be used as an elective path for energy generation. High-quality fuel production using low position coal and biomass is imperative from the perspective of sustainable power source and the usage of unused assets. Towards this objective, pretreatment could be assumed a good job in upgrading physiochemical properties of biomass. Organosolv pretreatment, being a novel technique, improved the cellulosic content of lignocellulosic biomass by expelling the lignin content and adjusting the physical structure of biomass. In this work, organo-aqueous pre-treatment of industrial lignocellulosic rice husk RH at 80˚C and for 3 hours using glycerol. Glycerol-water percent content is used as process variable (100% Glycerol G, 75% G, 50% G, 25% G). Pre-treated industrial lignocellulosic RH is then mixed with low position coal C of Pakistan origin in a weight ratio of 50:50. Samples are subjected to proximate, ultimate, chemical and structural analysis to study the impact of glycerol pretreatment. In addition, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) is performed under inert environment at various heating rate (10, 30, 40˚C) to the temperature range from 30-900˚C was carried out. Carbon, hydrogen and cellulose content is improved after treating biomass with glycerol solutions. Apparently, the thermal profile of coal and pre-treated lignocellulosic biomass blends appear to correlate with percentage of Glycerol added for the pretreatment of RH. Also, first order reaction model Flynn Wall Ozawa F-W-O method was used to determine the kinetic parameters and activation energy for the coal and pretreated biomass blend. The highest value of activation energy that is 198.51 kJ/mol is obtained in the case of coal-rice husk blend having RH treated with 75% solution of glycerol. Fuel creation from biomass and coal could be an option and more practical approach to proficiently use coal and biomass together for power and vitality generation.