Thermal Characterization and Lifetime Estimation of the Humus Lombricospt

Abstract

Through this study, the humus produced in the breeding place of Universidad Autonoma de Occidente was thermally characterized. The humus was submitted to a heating program controlled by the Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) technique to characterize the type of transition, Thermogravimetry (TGA) to study the equilibrium of phasesand Mass Spectrometry (MS) coupled to TGA to identify detached elements in a temperature range. The temperature range used in this study was 30˚C < T < 600˚C. The energy required for the water desorption in the humus has been found in this study. The humus showed a quick desorption between 30˚C ≤ TDesorption ≤ 110˚C at a heating rate of 10˚C/min and presented decomposition around 250˚C. Moreover, the kinetics of the desorption of the humus was studied to obtain the activation energy three TGA measures for three different heating rates. The average activation energy was about 26 kJ/Mol. This result was carried out to obtain an estimation of the desorption time of water in the range from room temperature to the decomposition temperature around 350˚C