PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE bioresources.com Martinez et al. (2021). “Reaction kinetics of biomass,” BioResources 16(2), 2891-2905. 2891 Comparative Study of the Reaction Kinetics of Three Residual Biomasses Arnaldo Martinez, a Lourdes Meriño, a, * Alberto Albis, b and Jorge Ortega a Kinetic analysis for the combustion of three agro-industrial biomass residues (coconut husk, corn husk, and rice husk) was carried out in order to provide information for the generation of energy from them. The analysis was performed using the results of the data obtained by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) at three heating rates (10, 20, and 30 K/min). The biomass residues were characterized in terms of proximate analysis, elemental analysis, calorific value, lignin content, α-cellulose content, hemicellulose content, and holocellulose content. The biomass fuels were thermally degraded in an oxidative atmosphere. The results showed that the biomass thermal degradation process is comprised of the combustion of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin. The kinetic parameters of the distributed activation energy model indicated that the activation energy distribution for the pseudocomponents follows lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose in descending order. The activation energy values for each set of reactions are similar between the heating rates, which suggests that it is independent of the heating rate between 10 K/min and 30 K/min. For all the biomass samples, the increased heating rate resulted in the overlap of the hemicellulose and cellulose degradation events. Keywords: Biomass; Combustion; Kinetic parameters; DAEM Contact information: a: Agroindustrial program, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad del Atlántico, Km. 7 Vía a Puerto Colombia, Atlántico, Colombia; b: Chemical Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering, Universidad del Atlántico, Km. 7 Vía a Puerto Colombia, Atlático, Colombia; * Corresponding author: lourdesmerino@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co INTRODUCTION The shortage of conventional fossil fuels and the environmental problems that arise from their use, such as global warming and acid rain, have become a cause of concern for their contribution to climate change. Biomass is an alternative renewable and clean energy resource that can alleviate pollution problems, so it has received increasing attention from researchers (Demirbaş 2001; Yaman 2004). There are many conversion technologies to utilize biomass, such as direct combustion, gasification, pyrolysis, flash pyrolysis, and anaerobic digestion, among others (Song et al. 2004). In the literature, the combustion characteristics of different biomasses have been studied primarily through thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) (Kok and Ozgur 2017; Mlonka-Mędrala et al. 2019). Thermogravimetric analysis has been used to identify different polymeric lignocellulosic fractions present in biomass residues and to determine the reactivities of carbonized residues in presence of reactive atmospheres (Wilk et al. 2019; Sher et al. 2020). The kinetic study is considered an important criterion for the measurement of the reactivity potentials of coals and biomass residues that are used as fuels. The distributed activation energy model (DAEM) has been widely used to describe the thermal degradation of different biomasses (Hu et al. 2016; Oliveros et al. 2019) and