New insights on the kinetic analysis of isothermal data: The independence of the activation energy from the assumed kinetic model

Abstract

Isothermal experiments are widely employed to study the kinetics of solid-state reactions or processes to extract essential kinetic information needed for modeling the processes at an industrial scale. The kinetic analysis of isothermal data requires finding or assuming a kinetic function that can properly fit the evolution of the reaction rate with time, so that the resulting parameters, i.e., the activation energy and pre-exponential factor, can be considered reliable. In the present work, we demonstrate using both simulated and experimental data that the kinetic analysis of a set of isothermal plots obtained at different temperatures, considering a single-step solid-state reaction, necessarily leads to the real activation energy, regardless the mathematical function selected for performing the kinetic analysis. This makes irrelevant the election of the kinetic function used to fit the experimental data and greatly facilitates the estimation of the activation energy for any single process.