A Comparative Analysis of the Kinetic Experiments in Polyethylene Pyrolysis

Abstract

A review of literature has been conducted to survey the kinetic data of lowdensity polyethylene (LDPE) pyrolysis. The review reveals large variations in the reported global kinetic parameters. The cause of variation has been identified to be the difference in the experimental techniques, including thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and nonTGA methods. Even within the nonisothermal TGA data, large variations have been observed at heating rate of 20 K/min, while the variations are insignificant at lower heating rate regimes (2–10 K/min), indicating the influence of heat/mass transfer resistance controlling the kinetics. Detailed analysis revealed that most of the current techniques are unable to capture all the relevant data necessary for estimating the kinetic parameters of the aforementioned process. The outcome of this review work thrusts the need for a better experimental technique to estimate the kinetic parameters of complex reactions, such as polymer pyrolysis.