Reactive Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Biomass Pyrolysis and Combustion under Various Oxidative and Humidity Environments

Mechanical strength changes of combustible municipal solid waste components during their early pyrolysis stage and mechanism analysis

Implementation of municipal solid waste (MSW) source segregation leads to a more convenient recycle of combustible MSW components. Textiles, plastics and papers are commonly available combustible components in MSW. Their shredding is conducive to resources recovery. But these components usually have high tensile strengths and are difficult to shred. To understand their mechanical strength changes in their early pyrolysis stage will help to address this problem. In this study, a universal electronic testing machine was used to determine the breaking strengths of the materials including cotton towel, polyethylene glycol terephthalate (PET), ivory board (IB), kraft paper (KP) and wool scarf in the temperature range of 30-250°C under N2 atmosphere, and the mechanisms of their strength changes were explored. The reaction force field molecular dynamics (ReaxFF-MD) simulation was used to explain the decomposition behaviours of different sugar groups of hemicellulose in cotton and paper and the change of van der Waals energy of wool during their early pyrolysis stages. The results showed that breaking strengths of all the combustible MSW components reduced as the temperature increased. The breaking strength of PET was found to have the highest descent rate with increasing temperature, then the descent rates of wool and cotton came as the second and third, respectively. Compared with cotton, the breaking strengths of KP and IB decreased more slowly. As the temperature increased, the breaking strength of cotton reduced mainly due to the decomposition of the glucuronic acid in hemicellulose, and the reduction was characterized by CO2 release. The breaking strength reduction of PET was caused by its molecular chain being relaxed. The breaking strength reduction of wool was firstly caused by the decrease in the van der Waals energy between its molecules, and then caused by molecular chain breaking. In addition, in order to understand the influence of material size on the breaking strength change during thermal treatment, the breaking strengths of cotton yarn bundles were correlated with their yarn number and temperature. This study lays the foundation for understanding changes in mechanical strengths of combustible MSW components during their early pyrolysis stage.

Effects of CO2 atmosphere on low-rank coal pyrolysis based on ReaxFF molecular dynamics

Pyrolysis of low-rank coal in CO₂ atmosphere can reduce carbon emissions while comprehensively utilizing coal resources. Based on ReaxFF molecular dynamics (ReaxFF-MD), the pyrolysis processes of low-rank coal in inert and CO₂ atmosphere are simulated. By comparing the evolution of pyrolysis products, the influences of CO₂ on the pyrolysis characteristic and product distribution are analyzed. It is found that CO₂ slightly inhibits the conversion of char to tar in the early stage of pyrolysis. In the later stage, CO₂ significantly promotes the decomposition of char and increases the yield of tar and pyrolysis gas. According to the different bond breaking behaviors of coal molecules, the pyrolysis process can be divided into pyrolysis activation stage, initial pyrolysis stage, accelerated pyrolysis stage and secondary pyrolysis stage. The reforming reaction of CO₂ with alkanes generates free hydrogen radicals, which promotes the cleavage of ether bond, C_ar-C_ar bridge bond and aliphatic C-C bond. Compared with in inert atmosphere, final yield of light tar in CO₂ atmosphere increases from 17.98% to 20.68%. In general, the CO₂ atmosphere helps to improve the tar yield and tar quality of low-rank coal pyrolysis.

Pyrolysis Mechanism of Wheat Straw Based on ReaxFF Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Biomass has played an increasingly important role in the consumption of energy worldwide because of its renewability and carbon-neutral property. In this work, the pyrolysis mechanism of wheat straw is explored using reactive force field molecular dynamics simulations. A large-scale wheat straw model composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin is built. After model validation, the temporal evolutions of the main pyrolysis products under different temperatures are analyzed. As the temperature rises, the gas production increases and the tar yield can decrease after peaking. Relatively high temperatures accelerate the generation rates of the main gas and tar species. CO and CO₂ molecules mainly come from the cleavage of CHO₂ radicals, and numerous H₂O molecules are generated on account of dehydration. Moreover, the evolution of six functional groups and pyran and phenyl rings as well as three types of bonds is also presented. It is observed that the phenyl rings reflect improved thermostability. Finally, the pyrolytic kinetics analysis is conducted, and the estimated activation energy of wheat straw pyrolysis is found to be 56.19 kJ/mol. All these observations can help deeply understand the pyrolytic mechanism of wheat straw biomass.

Isolating key reaction energetics and thermodynamic properties during hardwood model lignin pyrolysis

Computational studies on the pyrolysis of lignin using electronic structure methods have been largely limited to dimeric or trimeric models. In the current work we have modeled a lignin oligomer consisting of 10 syringyl units linked through 9 β-O-4' bonds. A lignin model of this size is potentially more representative of the polymer in angiosperms; therefore, we used this representative model to examine the behavior of hardwood lignin during the initial steps of pyrolysis. Using this oligomer, the present work aims to determine if and how the reaction enthalpies of bond cleavage vary with positions within the chain. To accomplish this, we utilized a composite method using molecular mechanics based conformational sampling and quantum mechanically based density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Our key results show marked differences in bond dissociation enthalpies (BDE) with the position. In addition, we calculated standard thermodynamic properties, including enthalpy of formation, heat capacity, entropy, and Gibbs free energy for a wide range of temperatures from 25 K to 1000 K. The prediction of these thermodynamic properties and the reaction enthalpies will benefit further computational studies and cross-validation with pyrolysis experiments. Overall, the results demonstrate the utility of a better understanding of lignin pyrolysis for its effective valorization.

Molecular dynamics simulation for mechanism revelation of the safety and nutrition of lipids and derivatives in food: State of the art

Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has proved to be a powerful tool in the study of proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates et al. in fields of health, nutrition, and food science. In particular, MD simulation has been employed in the investigation of various lipid systems such as triglycerides, phospholipid membranes, etc. Due to the continuous updating of computing resources and the development of new MD simulation methods and force field parameters, the simulation's time and size scale of lipids system has increased by several orders of magnitude. However, MD simulation cannot be used for systems invovle chemical reactions. These greatly limit its further application in the field of lipid research. This paper reviews the progress and development of MD simulation, especially for the application of MD simulation in different lipid systems. In this paper, MD simulation and its general workflow was briefly introduced firstly. Subsequently, the application of MD simulation in various lipid systems was reviewed in-depth. Finally, the limitation and future prospects of MD simulation in lipid research were also discussed. This review provided new insights into the investigation of MD simulation, and a novel thought for lipid study. We believe that MD simulation will exhibit more and more great advantages in the investigation of lipids in the future due to the development of novlel methods.