J. Ind. Eng. Chem., Vol. 12, No. 6, (2006) 846-852 Application of Peak Property Method for Estimating Apparent Kinetic Parameters of Cellulose Pyrolysis Reaction Yujin Eom, Seungdo Kim* ,† , Seung-Soo Kim**, and Soo-Hyun Chung*** Department of Chemical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea *Department of Environmental System Engineering, Hallym University, Gangwon-do 200-702, Korea **Department of Environmental Engineering, Donghae University, Gangwon-do 240-713, Korea ***Waste Pyrolysis Research Center, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon 305-343, Korea Received December 6, 2005; Accepted February 22, 2006 Abstract: This paper presents the results of applying the Peak Property Method (PPM) to estimate the pyrolysis kinetic parameters of cellulose. The PPM was developed on the basis of the assumption that a specific combi- nation of three peak properties (peak temperature, peak height, and conversion at peak temperature) of a de- rivative thermogravimetry (DTG) curve would describe a unique thermal reaction. Theoretical DTG curves constructed using the kinetic parameters derived from the PPM simulate the experimental DTG curves the best among the model-fitting methods. The PPM provides a reaction order of 1.5 for the cellulose pyrolysis re- action, indicating that the first-order kinetics proposed by most previous studies may be inappropriate. Disparity between the activation energies determined by the model-free methods and model-fitting methods in- cluding the PPM suggests that a power law equation is not suitable for representing the conversion function of cellulose pyrolysis. Keywords: pyrolysis, kinetics, cellulose, peak property method Introduction 1) Shortages of fossil fuels as well as growing environ- mental concerns have rekindled interest in using renew- able energy sources more extensively. Biomass is one of the most promising renewable energy sources because of its versatile potentials for application. In this regard, py- rolysis has drawn much attention owing to its ability to produce fuels and valuable chemicals from biomass. Because dry biomass fuels typically comprise ca. 50 % cellulose by weight, the study of the pyrolysis kinetics of cellulose is essential to the process design of biomass pyrolysis. A great many investigators have dealt with cellulose py- rolysis kinetics. Power law equations have been in- troduced as the conversion function of cellulose pyroly- sis. Among the power law expressions, the first-order form has generally been accepted without confirmation † To whom all correspondence should be addressed. (e-mail: sdkim@hallym.ac.kr) [1-13]. Hence, it is essential to assess the validity of the first-order kinetics of cellulose pyrolysis. Recently, we developed a new method to estimate the kinetic parameters, which we called the Peak Property Method (PPM) [14]. The PPM assumes that three peak properties of a single derivative thermogravimetry (DTG) curve, peak temperature (T m ), peak height (H m ), and conversion at peak temperature (α m ), can character- ize the unique thermal decomposition reaction of a solid, leading to estimation of its activation energy (E), pre-ex- ponential factor (A), and reaction order (n). The PPM has turned out to be an effective tool for determining the n value together with the E and A. This paper applies the PPM to estimate the kinetic pa- rameters of the cellulose pyrolysis reaction and to verify whether or not a first-order reaction is appropriate for representing the cellulose pyrolysis reaction.