Anaerobic Pyrolysis Chamber: An atmosphere-controlled furnace for controlled-atmosphere thermal decomposition

As some materials are heated they undergo thermal decomposition, resulting in a change in the material's physical structure and chemical composition through a process called pyrolysis. During pyrolysis, flammable vapors are driven off the material; if those vapors are released in the presence of oxygen, flaming combustion may occur. Combustion can accelerate the decomposition process, making it difficult to isolate and harvest partially decomposed material samples for subsequent analysis. Due to this difficulty, the thermo-physical changes to materials undergoing pyrolysis have not been extensively studied. A new apparatus, termed the Anaerobic Pyrolysis Chamber (APC), was designed to produce gram-scale samples of partially decomposed materials by pyrolyzing those materials under a defined heating protocol and in an inert atmosphere. The APC consists of a decomposition chamber positioned within a muffle furnace, and an instrumentation package designed to monitor and control the temperature, pressure, and oxygen concentration within the decomposition chamber. The driving purpose of the APC was to produce solid products of pyrolysis for study in other measurement apparatus. The performance of the apparatus has been characterized, and the APC has been used to support property measurement in research studies.