Investigating the Kinetic Parameters in the Thermal Analysis of Jojoba Cake

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

2 The chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Port-Said University,Port-Said, Egypt

3 The chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University,Cairo, Egypt

4 The chemical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Jojoba seeds are processed to produce an oil of use in many industries. The cake left after oil extraction contains obnoxious substances which make it hazardous to use as animal fodder. In the present work, thermal analysis was used to identify the kinetics of biochar formation from the de-oiled residue. TG –DTG curves showed that decomposition takes place in two major steps corresponding to the devolatilization of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin. The residual material left consists of biochar which undergoes cracking up to about 500oC. The final ash constitutes about 17.2% of the dry material. Three iso-conversional methods were used in that work to investigate the decomposition kinetics, namely the FWO, KSA and Friedman techniques. Results proved that while the first decomposition step followed first order kinetics with average activation energy values ranging from 86.19 to 90.11 kJ.mol-1, the second step was controlled by reaction at interface with activation energies ranging from 93.26 to 99.37 kJ.mol-1, depending on the kinetic model used.

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