Kinetic Study of the Thermal Decomposition of Potassium Chlorate Using the Non-isothermal TG/DSC Technique

The non-isothermal TG/DSC technique has been used to study the kinetic triplet of the thermal decomposition of potassium chlorate at different heating rates (5, 10, 15 and 20 °C•min−1). The DSC results showed two consecutive broad exothermic peaks after melting. The first peak contains a shoulder indicating the presence of at least two processes. The overlapped peaks were resolved by a peak fitting procedure, and the three resolved peaks were used for evaluation of the kinetic triplet for each step. The TG results also showed two consecutive mass losses after melting. The kinetics of the mass loss processes were studied using resolved DTG peaks. The activation energies were calculated using the KAS model-free method. The pre-exponential factor and the best kinetic model for each step were determined by means of the compensation effect, and the selected models were confirmed by the nonlinear model fitting method. The average activation energies obtained from the DSC results were 237.3, 293.8, and 231.3 kJ•mol−1 for the three consecutive steps of thermal decomposition of KClO3. The activation energies were 231.0 and 239.9 kJ•mol−1 for the first and second mass loss steps. The Avrami-Erofeev of Ax/y with the function of g(α) = [−ln(1−α)]x/y (x/y = 5/4 and 3/2) was the most probable model for describing the reaction steps