Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A considerable variation exists in the kinetics constants that were derived using Arrhenius equation in the study of the reaction kinetics for wood pyrolysis. It is of interest to evaluate whether compensation behaviours that usually associate with a series of related reactions might have contributed to the observed variations in the nonisothermal pyrolysis kinetics. The study of the compensation effects was intended to seek a logical explanation for the observed variations of the apparently large and differed values of activation energy and pre-exponential factors. Statistical regression analyses were performed to correlate the Arrhenius parameters derived from the non-isothermal Thermogravimetry Analysis (TGA) data. To gain an insight on the competing reactions so as to expound the varied kinetic data, these transition kinetics were also analyzed for exothermic transition using Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) for heat of pyrolysis. This study showed that compensation effect existed, but found that the enthalpy of transition held a stronger proposition on the transition kinetics.