A new distributed activation energy model is presented using the logistic distribution to mathematically represent the pyrolysis kinetics of complex solid fuels. A numerical parametric study of the logistic distributed activation energy model is conducted to evaluate the influences of the model parameters on the numerical results of the model. The parameters studied include the heating rate, reaction order, frequency factor, mean of the logistic activation energy distribution, standard deviation of the logistic activation energy distribution. The parametric study addresses the dependence on the forms of the calculated alpha - T and d alpha/dT - T curves (alpha: reaction conversion, T: temperature). The study results would be very helpful to the application of the logistic distributed activation energy model, which is the main subject of the next part of this series. Crown Copyright (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.