Pyrolysis kinetics of filter mud from sugar mills

In order to facilitate the possible reuse of filter mud from sugar mills as boiler fuels or producing biochar that involves pyrolysis process, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was emploied to analyze the pyrolysis kinetics of it. In TGA tests, filter mud were heated from 30 °C to 800°C at different heating rates (5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 °C/min) in the atmosphere of nitrogen, and the relevant parameters of kinetics were performed by methods of Flynn–Wall–Ozawa (FWO) and the Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose (KAS). The results shown that the average activation energy analyzed by FWO and KAS were 322.28 and 321.93 kJ/mol, the average enthalpy were 289.04 and 288.24 kJ/mol, the average Gibbs free energy were 207.87 and 208.01 kJ/mol, respectively, the pre-exponential factors varied in the range of 1022–1039 s -1 .