Thermal degradation and kinetic analysis of waste sawdust biomass / Noor Najihah Mohd

Renewable fuel that derived from the plant biomass was the one of the good
alternatives to replace the limited and non environmental friendly fossil fuel. The
research presents the physical characteristics of sawdust biomass using TGA and
ATR- FTIR instrument. In TGA, the degradation of biomass component such as
hemicellulose and cellulose occur in two stages that release volatile components. By
ATR-FTIR, the volatile components can be determined by interpreting the spectrum
peak produced. In the proximate analysis, the moisture content, ash, fixed carbon and
volatile matter were calculated as 9.77, 4.01,16.81 and 69.41 wt.% respectively.
While, the result that obtained from TG/DTG curve were used for the kinetic analysis
sawdust biomass. In this analysis two kinetic model which is Kissinger-Akihira-Sunose
(KAS) and Flynn-WaIl-Ozawa (FWO) model were used to obtain the
activation energy, Ea. From the result, the average of activation energy for FWO
model was 63.92 kJ.mol-1 and for KAS was 57.24 kJ.mol-1 were obtained. This result
can be compared to the previous research to know the potential of sawdust biomass as
renewable fuel