Critical study of the isoconversional methods of kinetic analysis.

A critical study of the use of isoconversional methods for the kinetic analysis of non-isothermal data corresponding to processes with either a real or an apparent variation of the activation energy, E, with the reacted fraction, α, has been carried out using for the first time simulated curves. It has been shown that the activation energies obtained from model-free methods are independent of the heating rate. However, the activation energy shows a very strong dependence of the range of heating rates used for simulating the curves if the apparent change of E with α is caused by overlapping processes with different individual activation energies. This criterion perhaps could be used for determining if a real dependence between E and α is really occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]