CASHEW NUT SHELLS CHAR REACTIVITY AND COMBUSTION KINETICS

摘要

Combustion process is regarded as the most primitive and well-known chemical reaction. However, as the research on combustion increases, it becomes a fact that it is a very complex process with different parameters and features that cannot be studied at the same time and therefore, are not well known as such. In this study, cashew nut char, produced through pyrolysis at three different heating rates, is submitted to a combustion using a binary mixture of O{sub}2 and He to study char reactivity and determine char combustion kinetic parameters. Reactivity is studied by using the critical temperature approach and peak separation software while kinetics is determined through the NETZSCH advanced software that allows the determination of the frequency factor, the activation energy and the reaction order. The results are compared to the similar data available from the literature for other biomasses. Cashew nut shells pyrolysis char was found to be more reactive than char from olive husks, grape residues and pine woods pyrolysis.