New approach to elucidate compensation effect between kinetic parameters in thermogravimetric data

The study of thermogravimetric curves is commonly used to elucidate the likely processes involved during pyrolysis as well as determine the corresponding kinetic parameters. One of the main problems reported in the determination of such parameters is their ability to couple each other in such way that different sets of kinetic parameters can describe similar conversion degree curves once a kinetic model has been selected. Least-squared methods can be used to calculate the optimum kinetic parameters that minimize the squared differences between experimental and calculated data. Although the calculation can be successfully done, there are still questions to be answered. In the present work, a procedure to register the compensation effect between kinetic parameters is suggested.