Kinetic Analysis of a Decomposition Reaction by Gas Chromatography

D. QUATTRINI; J.P. GAVIRÍA; FOUGA G.; A.E. BOHÉ; D. PASQUEVICH

San Diego, California, EEUU

Simposio; 2006 TMS Fall Extraction & Processing Meeting: Sohn Int'l Symposium; 2006

TMS

The aim of the present work is to present the gas chromatography (GC) as an alternative method of analysis in the thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate. Therefore, a furnace/GC on-line system was employed to study the kinetics of the reaction, measuring the CO2 produced in the decomposition. One of the advantages of the GC method is the possibility to perform an in-situ characterization and quantification of the gaseous products to obtain kinetic parameters, besides the method is simple and shows a good repeatability.The decomposition of calcium carbonate was carried out in isothermal conditions at temperatures from 655 to 715°C with nitrogen as purge gas. Several gas velocities were used to determine the adequate flow that minimizes the effect of external mass diffusion as rate controlling step. It was made a preliminary analysis of the sample size influence on the reaction rate.The activation energy of the reaction was determined by Flynn method. The value obtained was in a good agreement with other authors. On the other hand, gravimetric measurements were employed for compare GC results.