The kinetics of CO2 gasification of coal chars

The gasification reactivities of three char samples derived from coals of varying ranks (“Turów” lignite, “Piast”, and “Wieczorek” sub-bituminous coals) toward CO₂ were investigated isothermally using thermogravimetric analysis. Kinetic behavior was studied at temperatures of 900, 950, and 1,000 °C under atmospheric pressure. Conditions for the chemical-controlled regime were established at these temperatures and pressure. In this paper, four kinetic models were applied to describe the varying conversion rate: volumetric model, grain model, modified volumetric model, and random pore model. From these models, only the random pore and the volumetric models positively corresponded to nearly the entire range of experimental results. Calculated values of activation energy for study samples were in the range of 180–250 kJ mol^?1, which is in accordance with other reported data. Moreover, the obtained results confirmed the significant impact of parent coal rank on its char reactivity, offering possibilities in the approximation of coal char kinetic behavior after further more detailed studies with a larger number of samples.