Artificial Neural Network Study on the Pyrolysis of Polypropylene with a Sensitivity Analysis

Among machine learning (ML) studies, artificial neural network (ANN) analysis is the most widely used technique in pyrolysis research. In this work, the pyrolysis of polypropylene (PP) polymers was established using a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) with five sets of heating rates (5–40 K min(−1)). TGA data was used to exploit an ANN network by achieving a feed-forward backpropagation optimization technique in order to predict the weight-left percentage. Two important ANN model input variables were identified as the heating rate (K min(−1)) and temperature (K). For the range of TGA values, a 2-10-10-1 network with two hidden layers (Logsig-Tansig) was concluded to be the best structure for predicting the weight-left percentage. The ANN demonstrated a good agreement between the experimental and calculated values, with a high correlation coefficient (R) of greater than 0.9999. The final network was then simulated with the new input data set for effective performance. In addition, a sensitivity analysis was performed to identify the uncertainties associated with the relationship between the output and input parameters. Temperature was found to be a more sensitive input parameter than the heating rate on the weight-left percentage calculation.