Study of pyrolysis kinetics of oil shale

The pyrolysis experiments on oil shale samples from Fushun, Maoming, Huangxian, China, and Colorado, USA, were carried out with the aid of thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) at a constant heating rate of 5 °C/min. A kinetic model was developed which assumes several parallel first-order reactions with changed activation energies and frequency factors to describe the oil shale pyrolysis. The kinetic parameters of oil shale pyrolysis were determined on the basis of TGA data. The relationship between the kinetic parameters was further investigated and the correlation equations of x∞–E and ln A–E were obtained. These equations show that the final fractional conversion of each parallel reaction, x∞(j), can be expressed as an exponential function of the corresponding activation energy. The plot of ln A–E for different reactions becomes a straight line. These relationship equations can provide important information to understand the pyrolysis mechanism and to investigate the chemical structure of oil shale kerogen.