Pyrolysis and simulation of typical components in wastes with macro-TGA

The pyrolysis of typical components of biomass waste, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, pectin and starch was performed and compared in a continuous-weighting fixed bed reactor acting as a macro thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA), namely macro-TGA. The mass loss and mass loss rate with time derived from macro-TGA looks similar to TG curve and differential thermogravimetric (DTG) curve from TGA. Compared to those from TGA, the DTG peak of every sample pyrolysis on macro-TGA delayed, and only one main peak appeared on hemicellulose with macro-TGA. The residue of different samples was in decreasing sequence as lignin > pectin > hemicellulose > starch > cellulose. Furthermore, the pseudo-components model based on the TG/macro-TG curves simulation was analyzed and compared. The overlap ratios between raw TG/macro-TG curves and simulation curves through different methods were all higher than 0.977 at the heating rate of 10 °C/min to suggest that biomass waste pyrolysis characteristics could be well simulated by its components.