To investigate the actual pyrolysis characteristics of oil sludge as much as possible

a laboratory scale macro thermogravimetric analyzer was designed to conduct the relative experiments.The effects of heating rate and particle size on thermal behaviour of oil sludge were analyzed

and the results were compared with that obtained by the conventional thermogravimetric analyzer.Moreover

the distributed activation energy kinetic model was employed to obtain the reactive kinetic parameters.The results show that

with an increase in heating rate and particle size

the main weight loss occurred at higher temperatures;the activation energy E was between 14.4 kJ/mol and 35.81kJ/mol

and the pre-exponential factor A ranged from 37.87s-1 to 844.1s-1

indicating there was good linear relationship between E and lnA

which satisfied the kinetic compensation effect;at the very beginning

weight loss of the oil sludge on the macro thermogravimetric analyzer lagged behind that on the micro thermogravimetric analyzer

but then this trend gradually weakened;both the reaction activation energy and pre-exponential factor obtained from the macro thermogravimetric analyzer were smaller than that from the micro thermogravimetric analyzer.