Thermogravimetric analysis on the pyrolysis and combustion characteristics of mixed fuels of petroleum coke and coal

Co-combustion of petroleum coke with coal is an effective and attracting method to treat the petroleum coke. In this work, the thermogravimetric analyses on the pyrolysis and combustion performance of adopted bituminous coal, petroleum coke and their mixed fuels were conducted. The chemical kinetic parameters including the apparent activation energy E and the pre-exponential factor A_0 were obtained based on the thermogravimetric results. The experimental results indicate that the starting pyrolysis temperature changes little with the decrease of the ratio of coal to petroleum coke, the rate of volatile release slows down, the temperature corresponding to the maximum rate of volatile release is increasing, and the final weight loss is reducing. The chemical kinetic parameters (E and A_0) are increasing. By contraries, when the ratio of coal to coke is increasing, the ignition and burn-out temperature and the temperature corresponding to the maximum combustion rate are decreasing.