The kinetics of vapour-phase cellulose fast pyrolysis reactions

Biomass fast pyrolysis reactions consist of primary activation and fragmentation reactions, followed by secondary vapour-phase cracking reactions. Kinetic data derived from in-house experiments and published literature have clearly indicated that under true fast pyrolysis conditions, the primary reaction rates exceed those of the secondary reactions by several orders of magnitude. Therefore, since the cracking reactions are rate-limiting, an estimation of the rate of conversion of biomass to secondary products is in fact an estimation of the secondary reaction rate. This paper focuses on the determination of the key kinetic parameters (rate constants, pre-exponential constant and activation energy) for the vapour-phase cracking reactions which occur during cellulose pyrolysis. The parameters were determined using a first-order kinetic model and a non-linear regression routine. The experimental work was conducted in the Ultrapyrolysis equipment at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.