- Author
- Solomon, P. R.
- Title
- Predicting the Thermal Decomposition Behavior of Hydrocarbons. CFR Video Seminar.
- Coporate
- Advanced Fuel Research, Inc., East Hartford, CT
- Report
- Video, April 6, 1990,
- Keywords
- hydrocarbons | thermal decomposition
- Abstract
- An important property in determining a material's combustion performance is its thermal decomposition behavior. This presentation will describe a recently developed general model for the thermal decomposition of coal, and how the model can be applied to other hydrocarbons. The model combines a functional group model for gas evolution with a statistical model to describe the fragmentaion of the macromolecular network. The model describes the processes of bond breaking, hydrogen utilization, crosslinking and mass transport. It has been extremely accurate in describing the variation in the detailed thermal decomposition product distribution and fluidity of coal with temperature, heating rate, coal rank, weathering and pressures. Techniques have been developed to use a TG-FTIR (a thermogravimetric analyzer with analysis of evolved products by FT-IR) to derive, for each material, the kinetics and composition parameters required by the model. Recent work has been directed at extinding the model and laboratory characterization to synthetic polymers. The methodology and its application to polymers will be discussed.