Effects of organic and inorganic metal salts on thermogravimetric pyrolysis of biomass components

Thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) was employed to elucidate the catalytic effects of organic and inorganic metal salts (K2CO3, KAc, Na2CO3 and NaAc) on the pyrolysis of three biomass components (cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin). In case of cellulose, TG analysis results showed that all the four metal salts increased the yield of char products and decreased the weight loss rates of cellulose pyrolysis, which followed the order of Na2CO3 > K2CO3 > NaAc > KAc. In contrast to cellulose, the four organic and inorganic salts employed had no significant effects on the remaining two biomass components:, hemicellulose and lignin. However, the four metal salts led to the devolatilization reaction of hemicellulose to occur at lower temperature region, and the dehydration reaction of lignin was promoted more or less. An increase in the heating rate might augment the maximum degradation rate. Different mixing ratios had little influence on the progress of catalytic pyrolysis. Based on the observations, the potential mechanism of the catalytic pyrolysis of biomass components with metal salts was discussed.