Pyrolysis Kinetics of Oil-Palm Solid Waste

Abstract

Pyrolysis of oil-palm shells, a cheap and abundantly available solid waste from palm oil producing process, was carried out using thermogravimetric analysis. The effect of heating rates (10,15,20 and 25°C/min) on the kinetic parameters (activation energy, frequency factor and reaction order) was investigated. The oil-palm shells were pyrolyzed in an inert atmosphere using nitrogen as a medium gas. It is observed that the kinetic behavior of the samples can be divided into three zones. The first zone was in the temperature around 300-380°C, the second zone was 380-450°C while the third zone was from 450-850°C. The analysis have shown that the reaction orders for the regions I, II and III were second, first and zero orders, respectively. While the activation energy for the zones I, II and III were found to be in the range of 54-65, 34-41and 5-8 kJ/mol, respectively. Results also showed that the activation energy was relatively constant at different heating rate.