Babi,
A thermodynamic approach to simulate coal devolatilization is the same to biomass combustion/gasification/pyrolysis. That case the feedstock is considered as combinations of C, H, O, N, and S elements. Given a temperature condition so Cantera minimizes the Gibbs energy of the products.
So see an old discussion titled "Equilibrium model for gasification". Take the sample file "pyrolysis_test.py" and changes the biomass compostion to the coal composition.
Regards,
Rodolfo
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Rodolfo Rodrigues, MSc Eng
PhD-student in Chem. Engineering, UFRGS