Kinetic analysis of solid-state reactions:: Precision of the activation energy calculated by integral methods

The integral methods are extensively used for the kinetic analysis of solid-state reactions. As the Arrhenius integral function [p(x)] does not have an exact analytical solution, different approximated equations have been proposed in the literature for performing the kinetic analysis of experimental integral data. Since the first approximation of Van Krevelen, a large number of equations have been proposed with the objective of increasing the precision in the determination of the Arrhenius integral, as checked from the standard deviation of the approximated function with regard to the real exact value of the integral. However, the main application of these equations is the determination of the kinetic parameters, in particular activation energies, and not the computation of the Arrhenius integral. A systematic analysis of the errors involved in the determination of the activation energy from these integral methods is still missing. A comparative study of the precision of the activation energy as a function of x and T computed from the different integral methods has been carried out. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.