TGA analysis of tobacco rob pyrolysis and release characteristics of noncondensable gas in a fixed-bed reactor

In this study, the size of tobacco rob (TR) particle was considered as a major factor in determining the mass loss in thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and product yield and composition at different reactor temperatures in the fixed-bed reactor. The TGA results showed that the conversion rate increased and the activation energy (ranged from 53.29 to 58.25 kJ/mol) decreased with a decrease in particle size. The experiments demonstrated that fuel gas yield (from 0.76 to 0.82 Nm³/kg at 900 °C) increased with a decrease in particle size while char and tar yield decreased. Smaller particle sizes resulted in higher H₂ (25.68%) and CO (27.36%) contents. Minimizing the size of raw materials is an alternative method to improve the gas quality of TR pyrolysis. The increase of gas yield was attributed to the decomposition of char and tar vapor as temperature increased.