Determination of the Order of Kinetics of a DTA Curve by Using the Concept of Skewness

Abstract

In the present paper, a novel way of finding out the order of kinetics of differential thermal analysis (DTA) curves by using the concept of skewness (Sk) has been investigated. It is found that for a particular DTA peak, skewness is a function of both the order of kinetics and the quantity, First order DTA peaks are characterized by negative skewness whereas those for the second order are characterized by positive skewness. Therefore, skewness can be used as an indicator of the order of kinetics of a DTA peak. We have evaluated and compared the orders of kinetics of some reported DTA peaks using the concept of skewness and found that the resulting values of the orders of kinetics are in fair agreement with those reported in literature.