Development and Characterization of Agro-Allied Rice Husks and Groundnut Shell Waste Briquettes

Abstract

Briquetting of agro-residues can alleviate some of the problems of energy shortage being encountered worldwide. The briquettes are essentially manufactured to provide cheap energy to various sectors. Most importantly, domestic households are finding it difficult to purchase other sources of energy because of their cost. In this research the briquettes were produced in a briquetting screw press – BSP, using a manually operated piston and cylindrical shape Mould. The individual materials were mixed thoroughly in a ratio of rice husk: groundnut shell (RH:GS) as follows: 100:00; 70:30; 50:50; 30:70; and 00:100. A fixed quantity of each mixture was separately hand-fed into a manually operated closed-end piston press to compact the briquettes. Thereafter, the briquettes were ejected and placed on drying racks and left in the sun for drying. The moisture content, ash content, volatile matter, fixed carbon, ignition time, flame propagation time, calorific value and water boiling test were investigated to determine the physical and thermal properties of the briquettes produced. The results of the investigation showed that the moisture content of the briquettes ranged from 3.96 – 5.65%, the calorific value ranges from 130, 63.56 – 141, 62.87 kJ/kg, the range of ash content is 6.10 - 9.32 %, for fixed carbon, is 7.67 - 20.20 %, the ignition time ranges from 238-270 sec and the ranges for water boiling test time is 10.57m, – 13.37m. These values satisfactorily compare well with values obtained by other researchers in the literature. Therefore, the rice husk-groundnut shell briquettes are a good alternative source of thermal energy for cooking. It is an economical and also an environmentally friendly source of energy and waste disposal.