Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The wood and leaf samples of eight species are examined by non-isothermal means to determine the mass loss kinetics of the thermal decomposition with linear temperature programming in air atmosphere. A simple kinetic description is developed based on the experimental results and integral analysis method. In the model, the mass loss process consists of three steps. The first step corresponds to the water evaporation, and the subsequent two mass loss steps are mainly due to two major pseudo components. The two pseudo components decompose respectively at two separate temperature regions. Under this kinetic scheme, the kinetic compensation effect is analyzed and it is found that the kinetic parameters E and A resulted from the variation of the species and the variation of model functions exhibit kinetic compensation effect. Quantitative and statistical criterion to distinguish between real and false compensation effect is discussed in detail.