Kinetics of the thermal degradation of Erica arborea by DSC:: Hybrid kinetic method

The scope of this work was the determination of kinetic parameters of the thermal oxidative degradation of a Mediterranean scrub using a hybrid method developed at the laboratory. DSC and TGA were used in this study under air sweeping to record oxidative reactions. Two dominating and overlapped exothermic peaks were recorded in DSC and individualized using an experimental and numerical separation. This first stage allowed obtaining the enthalpy variation of each exothermic phenomenon. In a second time, a model free method was applied on each isolated curve to determine the apparent activation energies. A reactional kinetic scheme was proposed for the global exotherm composed of two independent and consecutive reactions. In fine mean values of enthalpy variation and apparent activation energy previously determined were injected in a model fitting method to obtain the reaction order and the preexponential factor of each oxidative reaction. We plan to use these data in a sub-model to be integrated in a wildland fire spread model. (C) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.