Kinetic Study of the Pyrolysis of Canary Pine: The Relationship between the Elemental Composition and the Kinetic Parameters

The realization of several silvicultural treatments in the Canary Islands entails the felling of the Canarian pine that can be an energy source as lignocellulosic biomass. The kinetic parameters of the pyrolysis of the Canary pine, which were yet unavailable in the literature, were determined. The isoconversional methods of Kissinger and Flynn–Wall–Ozawa and a model-based method were comparatively evaluated. The latter model mentioned considers that it is possible to describe the pyrolysis through a parallel reaction scheme of three pseudo components that represent hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin. The model fit was improved setting a Gaussian function centered on the peak as the inverse of the error. Using the mean proportions obtained for each pseudocomponent, the elemental chemical composition of the Canarian pine was calculated. The results show a good agreement between the experimental and calculated chemical composition. The difference between both compositions was −3.6%, 0.3%, and 3.7% for C, H, and O, respectively.