Study of Thermo-Kinetics and Synergistic Effects on Tripyrolysis of Lignite Coal, Rice Straw and Polyethylene Terephthalate

Abstract

The fast depletion of non-renewable energy sources, environmental concerns, and energy security are demanding less and effective use of fossil fuels. Due to these concerns, more focus is required on biofuels to be obtained from thermochemical and biochemical conversion processes. Biofuels obtained from biomass, coal, and waste plastic have gained much attention to be used as the replacement to fossil fuels. This utilization of waste biomass and plastic also serves as a solution to domestic solid waste. Pyrolysis is one of the potential thermochemical processes being focused for this purpose. Thermogravimetric Analyzer (TGA) is one of the important technologies helpful in studying the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters and synergistic effects in the process. The synergistic effects have also been studied here in tri-pyrolysis of feedstock blends. Starting from basic introduction, the samples preparations, blending, characterization and analysis, thermo-kinetics, and synergistic effects have been studied in this research work. This thesis report basically presents the research work on tri-pyrolysis of lignite coal, rice straw, and polyethylene terephthalate for different blend ratios. It presents a comparison for pyrolysis of individual samples and blend ratios. It also presents a study of increase in conversion and yields in case of blend ratios due to the presence of materials particle interactions and synergistic effects. The study reports first time the tri-pyrolysis of lignite coal, rice straw, and PET plastic blends. Study was carried out in TGA. Samples were placed in TGA, and temperature was raised from ambient to 900 °C. TGA curves were obtained for weight loss % against temperature. Based on the results of TGA, the thermo-kinetic analysis, and synergistic effects in different blend ratios were studied. Model-Fitting Kinetic models were applied for detailed Thermo-Kinetics study of the tri-pyrolysis of blends at a single constant heating rate of 10 °C/min. During the whole process, an inert atmosphere was provided inside TGA with N2 inert gas with flow rate of 30 mL/min. Finally, the results were concluded providing a lead for effective biofuels production applications.