This paper discusses some aspects of the strategy used in the paper "Evaluating the bioenergy potential of Chinese Liquor-industry waste through pyrolysis, thermogravimetric, kinetics and evolved gas analyses" by Ye et at [Energy Conyers. Manage. 163 (2018) 13-21]. Normally, activation energy is obtained from a model-free method which is then used to evaluate the reaction mechanism using master plots and finally Arrhenius pre-exponential factor is estimated. In the original paper, the pre-exponential factors were obtained directly from the model-free methods such as Ozawa-Flynn-Wall (OFW) and Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose (KAS) without specifying reaction mechanism. The estimated pre-exponential factors were then used to evaluate the thermodynamic behavior of Chinese Liquor-industry waste during pyrolysis. A confusion was created which needed further discussion for the readers.