Development of Rice Husk and Saw Dust Briquettes for Use as Fuel

Abstract

Rice husk and Saw dust, which is a large portion of biomass produced in the regions has been lying waste at the rice and saw mills in most part of this country. It was investigated as a source of solid fuel; four sets of solid fuel briquettes were produced from rice husk and saw dust separately using cassava starch and gum Arabic as binders respectively. The briquetting was carried out manually using a dead weight. Good and strong briquettes were produced. Briquettes from saw dust with cassava starch had the highest moisture content 24.36 while rice husk with cassava starch has the lowest 20.00. Also the values for dry briquette indicates that saw dust cassava starch had the highest value for density 0.6095 while rice husk gum Arabic has the lowest value of density 0.5053.The combustion performance showed that 1 litre of water was boiled in 12minutes for saw dust while it took 15 minutes for rice husk had more burning efficiency than that of rice husk. Rice husk with gum Arabic recorded the highest percentage for ash content of 21% while saw dust starch recorded the lowest percentage of 9%. During the water boiling test, the colour of the flame for the rice husk & gum Arabic briquettes was pale yellow throughout with lesser smoke and the same applies for rice husk with cassava starch briquettes only that the colour of the flame was pale yellow initially but as it stabilized, the colour became pale blue which signifies complete combustion and high heating efficiency. These indicate the superiority of briquettes by varying the binders in terms of combustion characteristics and quantity respectively.