Experiments to quantitatively determine detailed species production from the pyrolysis of Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator (PICA) were performed using a reactor assembly adapted from a previous study on phenol-formaldehyde resin decomposition. A step-wise heating procedure that used a 50 K increment from room temperature up to 1250 K was employed for the experiments. The mass loss was measured after each 50 K step for PICA samples with an initial mass of 100 mg. Species production from the pyrolysis process was quantified using state-of-the-art gas-chromatography techniques. Compared to the more traditional mass spectroscopy techniques, gas chromatography allows to measure all species, from hydrogen to large aromatics. The quantitative molar production of species versus temperature is reported in this work. The species product from PICA pyrolysis are quite different from the species obtained in a previous study on a resole type phenolic resin pyrolysis. This suggests that characterizations need to be carried out for all variations of phenolic-matrix based ablators.
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