Kinetic behavior of sunflower oil pyrolysis over mesoporous materials

Mesoporous materials type MCM-41 and AlMCM-41 were synthesized by the hydrothermal method and characterized by X-ray diffraction and nitrogen adsorption. Analyses have showed that the hexagonal structures of the materials were preserved and the template completely removed. In this work, the degradation of pure sunflower oil and mixed with mesoporous materials were evaluated. A kinetic study of the oil degradation was performed by thermal analysis under heating rates of 5, 10 and 20 °C min−1 using the model-free kinetic in order to determine the kinetic parameters for this process. From this method, the obtained values of apparent activation energy for sunflower oil/AlMCM-41 was of 167 kJ mol− 1.

Research Highlights
► The kinetic study of pyrolysis of sunflower oil.
► Mesoporous materials were used as catalysts.
► The model-free kinetics was applied do the process.
► The catalytic activities were evaluated by means of the activation energy.