THERMAL DECOMPOSITION OF WOOD FIBERS: THERMAL SIMULATION USING THE F-TEST STATISTICAL TOOL

"Wood biomass is an alternative for fossil fuels to produce bioenergy, due to its low cost, renewability andenvironmental friendliness. In order to use biomass as an energy source, understanding its thermal degradation behavioris highly recommended. This work focuses on the thermal degradation of wood fibers belonging to different species(Pinus elliotti (PIE), Eucalyptus grandis (EUG) and Mezilaurus itauba (ITA)), commonly used by the Brazilian lumberindustry. The prediction of their degradation kinetics and overall thermal behavior was performed based on the mostcommon theoretical data using the F-test statistical tool. The most probable degradation mechanism was found to beautocatalytic for all the wood fibers tested, with three different degradation steps. The results obtained were inaccordance with the findings recently reported in the literature using other fitting methods. It was found that cellulose isthe major contributor to Arrhenius parameters, while hemicelluloses – to reaction order."