Formal kinetic parameters - problems and solutions in deriving proper values

Chemical kinetics is the measurement and interpretation of chemical reaction rates. There are two main reasons to study the rate of a chemical reaction. First, kinetics provides a powerful tool to determine the values of the rate equation as a function of state variables. Second, kinetics may not be the most efficient tool to investigate any reaction mechanism; however, together with complementary evidence from other techniques, kinetic analysis is useful for the understanding of the mechanism during a chemical reaction. For heterogeneous reactions, such as thermal decomposition of biomass, the reaction involves at least one initially solid reactant. The chapter presents a case study of isothermal kinetic analysis of biomass derived materials by a pyrolysis microreactor connected to online mass spectrometry. It is separated into three parts: (i) instrument and operating conditions; (ii) kinetic evaluation procedure; (iii) formal kinetic parameters and some technical applications.