Pyrolysis Characteristics and Kinetics of Cotton Stalk

China is one of largest cotton-producing countries in the word. Cotton stalk production (dry mass)in China is above 900 million tons per year. The conversion of these materials by thermochemical processes like pyrolysis can significantly and immediately reduce the mass and volume of wastes, allowing for energy recovery. In this paper, the pyrolysis characteristics and kinetics of cotton stalk were studied by means of STA449c thermo gravimetric apparatus. The process used heating rates of 5, 10, 20, 30 °C/min and final temperature of 600°C under high purify N2.TG-DTG curves for cotton stalk showed that the pyrolysis was divided into 4 stages: dehydration, pre-heating, main pyrolysis and carbonization. The optimized mechanism and the corresponding function G(¿), f(¿)were derived from the regression of Stava and Achar .The results of the studies showed that when ¿ was 10% ~80%, the activation energy of cotton stalk was relatively stable. The kinetic mechanism of cotton stalk could be best described by Avrami-Erofeev equation, which belonged to the random nucleation and subsequent growth mechanism. The reaction order of sample was 3 according to the experimental results.