Comparative investigation on thermal decomposition of powdered and pelletized biomasses: Thermal conversion characteristics and apparent kinetics.

In this work, the thermal degradation behaviors of two kinds of biomasses (pinewood and rice husk) with powder and pellet under three oxygen concentrations were investigated by a self-designed macro-thermogravimetric analyzer. An obvious hysteresis of thermal degradation of biomass pellets was observed under three conditions. The maximum activation energy of biomass pellets was significantly greater than that of biomass powders, while their average activation energies were almost equal based on distributed activation energy model. For the oxygen-rich combustion, the comprehensive combustion character index of powdered and pelletized biomasses ranged from 3.92 × 10-7 to 5.16 × 10-7%2·min-2·°C-3 and from 1.82 × 10-7 to 1.91 × 10-7%2·min-2·°C-3, respectively. Furthermore, the derived biochar of powdered biomass has a higher caloricity than that of pelletized biomass during combustion by TG-DSC analysis. The performances of thermal degradation observed by macro-thermogravimetric analyzer could factually reveal the influence of mass and heat transfer on the thermochemical conversion of powdered and pelletized biomasses.

Photocatalytic oxidation of NOx over TiO2/HZSM-5 catalysts in the presence of water vapor: Effect of hydrophobicity of zeolites.

TiO(2) hybridized with HZSM-5 zeolites photocatalysts were prepared by a simple solid state dispersion method. The physicochemical properties of the catalysts were characterized by X-ray diffraction, UV-vis diffuse reflectance and FT-IR spectroscopy. The photocatalytic oxidation of NO(x) over TiO(2)/HZSM-5 having different Si/Al ratios was carried out under various levels of humidity and different pre-adsorption times in dark. The TiO(2)/HZSM-5 composite catalysts exhibited higher NO conversion and lower NO(2) formation than pure TiO(2). Pre-adsorption with water vapor and the high humidity during the photoreaction were harmful to the reactivity of TiO(2) hybridized with hydrophilic HZSM-5 zeolite. However, the photocatalytic reactivity of TiO(2) hybridized with hydrophobic zeolite varied little with increase in humidity. The results indicated that the high photocatalytic reactivity of TiO(2)/HZSM-5 catalysts is largely depended on the hydrophobicity of the zeolites.