A hybrid pyrolysis mechanism of phenol formaldehyde and kinetics evaluation using isoconversional methods and genetic algorithm

This contribution experimentally and numerically investigates the thermal decomposition of phenol formaldehyde (PF) through thermogravimetric method coupling a new hybrid pyrolysis mechanism. Complicated pyrolysis process associated with at least 6 reactions was observed and a Gauss multi-peak fitting method was applied to identify the contribution of each reaction. Kinetic parameters of the separated reactions were estimated by KAS, Tang and Kissinger isoconversional methods. A developed numerical model capable of predicting complex pyrolysis procedure and the Genetic Algorithm (GA) were combined to parameterize the hybrid pyrolysis mechanism. The estimation results from the isoconversional methods were utilized to determine the initial values and the search ranges. The reliabilities of the proposed numerical model, the reaction scheme and the optimized parameters were validated by the good agreement between numerical predictions and experimental measurements. Meanwhile, the uncertainties of the obtained pre-exponential factors and the activation energies were analyzed to be 50 % and 18 %, respectively.