Non-Isothermal Pyrolysis of Xylan and Lignin : A Hybrid Simulated Annealing Algorithm and Pattern Search Method to Regulate Distributed Activation Energies

Biomass transformation into fuels, platform chemicals and materials contributes to developing sustainability and carbon neutralization. Pyrolysis is one of the most important approaches to valorize biomass. The distributed activation energy model (DAEM) is a comprehensive kinetic model in describing biomass pyrolysis kinetics. The estimation of the DAEM parameters is difficult, limiting its application. This work formulated the numerical calculation approach of the DAEM and proposed a hybrid simulated annealing (SA) and pattern search (PS) method for optimizing the DAEM parameters. The DAEM kinetic parameters were optimized by simultaneously fitting the experimental kinetic data of xylan and lignin pyrolysis at various heating rates using the proposed hybrid SA and PS method. The results showed that the proposed hybrid SA and PS method could effectively and accurately determine the DAEM parameters and the DAEM with the optimal parameters could reproduce the experimental kinetic data of xylan and lignin pyrolysis very well