Thermal Behavior of Carrageenan: Kinetic and Characteristic Studies

Abstract The pyrolytic and kinetic characteristics of carrageenan were evaluated and compared at heating rates of 5, 10, and 20°C min−1 under a nitrogen atmosphere. The activation energy, pre-exponential factors, and reaction orders were calculated. The results indicated that three stages occurred during pyrolysis: dehydration, primary devolatilization, and residual decomposition. The most probable mechanism was a three-dimensional diffusion model and can be described by the anti-Jander equation with a reaction order of 1. There were also kinetic compensation effects between the pre-exponential factors and the activation energy. Keywords: CarrageenanPyrolysisKinetic analysisActivation energyThermal behavior ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was financially supported by The National Basic Research Program (973 Program) of China (No. 2011CB200905), Tianjin Special project (No. YOM2021171), National special fund for transgenic project (2009ZX08009-019B), the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program (863) of China (2009AA10Z106), Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (2009ZRA02075), Shandong Science and Technology plan project (2011GHY11528), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41176153), the National Science & Technology Pillar Program (2008BAD95B11), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP21115).