Drying Kinetics of Indonesian Peat

Indonesia has the largest peatland area in the tropical region, situated mainly in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Papua. Peat is an organic substance which is highly combustible in dry conditions; dried peat can burn easily and spread vertically and laterally along peat layers. In Indonesia, peat fires have often occurred in recent decades. Besides being influenced by the amount of organic content, smoldering peat fires are also effected by the drying rate, pyrolysis, and heterogeneous oxidation on the peat surfaces. In contrast to flaming combustion, which have been widely studied, smoldering peat fires remain little understood. To date, the major peat fire-related publications concern the pyrolysis and combustion stages. The contribution of the drying kinetics of peat in the peat fire phenomenon is important, as this could provide complete understanding of the peat fire process. The objective of this paper is to make an isothermal drying kinetics analysis of peat. Peat samples were taken from various locations in Indonesia with the largest peat distribution, namely South Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and Papua. An isothermal test was conducted using a Shimadzu MOC63u Moisture Balance. At certain interval times, the weight of the specimen was measured, until it reached a constant weight of less than a 0.05% change in moisture content. Isothermal analysis was conducted for each peat sample at temperatures of 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, and 110oC. The results show that the activation energies from the isothermal measurement test were 24.97, 25.08, and 30.11 kJ/mole for Papuan, South Sumatran and Central Kalimantan peat, respectively.