The interaction of woody biomass with bituminous coal in their blends

This paper describes the non-isothermal pyrolysis of wood pellet and saw dust, and their blends with bituminous coal. The blends showed the distinct, two peaks in thermogravimetric curves, and the first peak came from the biomass pyrolysis and the second one came from the coal pyrolysis. The interaction in the blend was evaluated in terms of the maximum rate of weight loss, characteristic temperatures, char yields, and the calculated and experimental thermogravimetric curves. The activation energies and frequency factors for the blends were obtained with the multi-stage, Coats and Redfern method. The respective activation energies of 73 and 67 kJ/mol and the frequency factors of 725,100 and 65,262 min(-1) were obtained for the present wood pellet and saw dust samples. The thermogravimetric study shows that there is no significant interaction between the present biomass and coal in the blends, and the pyrolysis behavior can be described with the additive rule.