Surrogate chemical kinetics for drying of biomass and influence of moisture content on the burning behaviour of wood
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Castagna, Alexander
Rein, Guillermo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Solid phase burning models are necessary to understand fire dynamics of wood. Its thermal degradation produces pyrolysate and char which burn during flaming and smouldering respectively, but drying is the first thermophysical process to occur when wood, or biomass in general, burns. This study characterises the behaviour of drying via a single-step first-order Arrhenius-type reaction. A kinetic model is optimised using inverse modelling on TGA data, taken from the literature, from five different biomass types at different heating rates and moisture contents. Two clusters of biomass are identified: one of high lignin and low cellulose and hemicellulose content for which drying occurs faster at around 60 ◦C, and another of low lignin and high cellulose and hemicellulose content for which drying occurs slower at around 80 ◦C. The model is validated against further TGA data, yielding errors of 8% for the prediction of the faster drying cluster and 13% for the slower drying cluster. The resulting kinetics are used in combination with a one-dimensional meso-scale model for wood burning using Gpyro, a generalised pyrolysis model for porous fuels, to study the influence of kinetics,
heat transfer and mass transfer of moisture on the burning behaviour of wood. The model is compared against
experimental temperature data from the literature. The relationship between the position of the pyrolysis
and drying fronts with moisture content is shown. As the moisture content increases from 6% to 18%, the
pyrolysis rate decreases. The drying process acts thus as a heat sink which significantly delays pyrolysis. We
hence demonstrate that there exist two clusters of biomass drying behaviour and extract generalised drying
kinetics for each of them.
heat transfer and mass transfer of moisture on the burning behaviour of wood. The model is compared against
experimental temperature data from the literature. The relationship between the position of the pyrolysis
and drying fronts with moisture content is shown. As the moisture content increases from 6% to 18%, the
pyrolysis rate decreases. The drying process acts thus as a heat sink which significantly delays pyrolysis. We
hence demonstrate that there exist two clusters of biomass drying behaviour and extract generalised drying
kinetics for each of them.
Date Issued
2025-12-04
Date Acceptance
2025-11-06
Citation
Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, 2025, 41
ISSN
1540-7489
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal / Book Title
Proceedings of the Combustion Institute
Volume
41
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of The Combustion Institute. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ).
License URL
Subjects
Biomass
CELLULOSE
Charring
DECOMPOSITION
Drying
Energy & Fuels
Engineering
Engineering, Chemical
Engineering, Mechanical
FIRE
HEAT
Kinetic optimisation
MODEL
PEAT
Physical Sciences
PYROLYSIS
ROLES
Science & Technology
SMOLDERING COMBUSTION
Technology
Thermodynamics
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
105985
Date Publish Online
2025-12-04