Thermo-kinetic study to explicate the bioenergy potential of Holy Thistle (HT)

Abstract

Biomass is one of the key components for bioenergy generation in recent epoch as traditional resources and depleting swiftly. Going through this fact, the present study aims to appraise the feasibility of Holy Thistle (HT) to produce energy and valuable organic chemicals through pyrolysis. The HT was pyrolyzed at four heating rates including, 10, 20, 30, and 40 °C min−1 to perform thermo kinetic modeling and estimate thermodynamics parameters to establish the pyrolysis reaction process. The pyrolysis process of HT illustrated about 85–88 % of thermal degradation achieved through three different stages from 30 to 800 °C. The major degradation stage was observed from 170 to 450 °C with 55% to 60 % product formation from mainly cellulose and hemicelluloses components. Moreover, the average activation energy and pre-exponential factors demonstrated to be 183–184 kJ mol−1 and 1010 min−1 to 1025 min−1, respectively. The pyrolytic products exhibited agreement to the cleaner production of bio-gas, char and bio-oil which is evident for the potential and productivity of the feed combination.

Keywords

• Waste biomass
• Pyrolysis
• Thermodynamics parameters
• Bioenergy
• Pyrolysis products