The Tube Furnace with Online Mass Loss Measurement as a New Bench Scale Test for Pyrolysis

In this paper, a new gram scale experiment with well characterised boundary conditions is proposed for pyrolysis experiments. The set-up consists of a tube furnace, based on ISO19700, with a newly designed concept for a balance within the oven, allowing for online mass loss measurements. Samples with a length up to 50 cm can be investigated in this apparatus. The oven allows for experiments at fixed temperatures or at fixed heating rates, under controlled atmosphere, w.r.t. gas composition and flow rate. A thorough characterisation of the set-up is presented, including aspects like reproducibility of the heating rate or the precision of the balance. The functionality of the balance has been demonstrated with calcium carbonate (CaCO\(_{3}\)) experiments. This material was chosen because it decomposes in a single reaction, which only releases CO\(_{2}\). This allows for comparison between the mass loss rate of the balance and the CO\(_{2}\) production rate, measured by a gas analyser. Results for two different heating rates: 3 K/min and 5 K/min and for different masses (25 g and 8.5 g) are presented. The two measurement methods are in excellent agreement. Finally, the data obtained from the new experimental set-up is compared to results from thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) experiments.