An efficient and general analytical approach to modelling pyrolysis kinetics of oil shale

This paper presents a new approach to analytical modelling pyrolysis kinetics of oil shale based on Arrhenius equation which is inherently nonlinear allowing no exact analytical solution. The proposed method introduces an approximation which leads to a significant simplification of the closed-form solution and the calculation and allows for rapid estimates of kinetic parameters. The analytical model is successfully validated by both experimental data and the numerical model (R-2 > 0.99). In addition, the developed methodology and model are sufficiently general which can be applied to other types of fuel resources and chemical reactions. To demonstrate, some generalizations and extensions of representative kinetic models in wide-area applications are presented. The proposed modelling approach improves over the state-of-the-art methods for pyrolysis kinetics models in its efficiency, simplicity, generality and application-independence. The model is easy to implement and computationally attractive. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.