DETERMINATION OF THE GIANT-BAMBOO PYROLYSIS KINETIC PARAMETERS P. O. B. HOMRICH 1 , D. TOSS 2 , M. GODINHO 2 , D. PERONDI 2 , C. BROETTO 2 , F. FERRARINI 2 1 Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Química, Departamento de Desenvolvimento de Processos e Produtos 2 Universidade de Caxias do Sul, Faculdade de Engenharia Química E-mail para contato: phomrich@feq.unicamp.br ABSTRACT – The kinetics involved in giant bamboo thermal degradation under N2 atmosphere was investigated through non-isothermal thermogravimetric analyses (TGA) and derivative thermogravimetry (DTG) applying three isoconversional methods: Coats and Redfern (CR), MacCallum and Tanner (MT), and van Krevelen (VK). Besides that, samples characterization was conducted by van Soest’s method and by proximate analysis. The TGA experiments were performed with a N2 rate of 50 mL/min and five different heating rates were used: 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 °C/min, for a samples aged 5.5 years. The van Soest’s test indicated that the giant bamboo is composed of up to 73% of cellulose and the proximate analysis showed up to 84% of volatile matter. The highest weight loss region evaluated by the DTG was between 200-450°C, corresponding to a weight loss range of 10-85% in mass. The Coats-Redfern’s fitting-model indicated that two-dimensional diffusion was the mechanism which best describes the pyrolysis process in the highest weight loss region. The kinetic parameters determined by CR’s, MT’s, and MT’s methods, respectively, varied between 136 and 150 kJ/mol for the activation energy and between 2.75×10 10 and 3.6×10 11 s -1 for the pre- exponential factor. Comparing the calculated and experimental weight loss, was verified that the CR’s and MT’s average deviations were lower than the evaluated by VK’s method, indicating that the CR’s and MT’s describe better the giant bamboo pyrolysis. 1. INTRODUCTION The world necessity for clean energy and the continuous Earth’s warming due to the high pollutant gases emissions, provokes an increase in research for new environmentally friendly energy sources. Lignocellulosic biomasses are an interesting option to obtain biofuels [Basu, 2010], being mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, compounds which present high heating value due to the high carbon contents in their molecules [Glasser, 1985; McKendry, 2002]. Giant bamboo, scientifically known as Dendrocalamus giganteus Área temática: Engenharia de Reações Químicas e Catálise 1