Investigation on the ignition and burnout temperatures of bamboo and sugarcane bagasse by thermogravimetric analysis

Ignition and burnout temperatures are important properties of solid fuels for their applications in industry. In this study, the thermogravimetric analyses (TGA) of bamboo and sugarcane bagasse at five different heating rates of 5, 10, 20, 30, and 40 °C min−1 are performed. The intersection method (IM) and deviation method (DM) are employed to approach the ignition temperatures of the two biomass species, while IM and the conversion method (CM) are adopted to analyze their burnout temperatures. In IM and CM, both the ignition and burnout temperatures increase with increasing heating rate, as a consequence of the pronounced thermal lag in biomass particles at high heating rates. The measured ignition temperatures based on DM are lower than those based on IM, and there is no correlation between the temperature and heating rate. The determined burnout temperatures from IM are close to those obtained from CM, while the difference in the burnout temperatures of the two biomass samples is small. The ignition temperatures of the two biomass species measured from IM are between 250 and 300 °C, and their burnout temperatures are close to 500 °C. As a whole, IM is recommended for determining the ignition temperature of biomass, while CM is a feasible and simple route to approach the burnout temperature. The heating rates in TGA between 20 and 30 °C min−1 are suggested because of their accurate and time-saving operations.