This study has been focused on pyrolysis and combustion characteristics of rice straw and husk by using Thermogravimetric-Fourier Transform Infrared (TG-FTIR) analysis. Observation of thermal degradation during heating process such as drying , devolatilization of char-combustion process can be observed by TG curve (weight percentation) and DTG curve (weight loss percentation). The heat flow also can be investigated since the thermogravimetric instrument in this study was coupled with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Furthermore, gas released during heating process observed by FTIR. In additional, residual from both pyrolysis and combustion experiment is observed using SEM-EDS analysis.
Pyrolysis experiments in this study include N2 and CO2 environment. While for combustion there are four cases. Air combustion as the base case and oxy-fuel combustion: 21%O2/79%CO2, 30%O2/70%CO2, and 35%O2/65%CO2 were performed. Pyrolysis and combustion characteristics were obtained from thermogravimetric analysis. The additional combustion performance indices were performed in order to have better observation for combustion experiments especially in oxy-fuel combustion cases.
Overall, both rice straw and husk pyrolysis experiment shows that in CO2 environment there is additional stage after 7500C is due to char-CO2 gasification. Activation energy in CO2 pyrolysis higher than N2 pyrolysis. While in oxy-fuel combustion cases, the replacement of N2 by CO2 will delay the char combustion to higher temperature, but after increasing oxygen in oxy-fuel combustion the combustion characteristics and indices will increase, which means it has better combustion.

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