AVAILABILITY AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF RESIDUES FROM MAJOR AGRICULTURAL CROPS FOR ENERGY CONVERSION THROUGH THERMOCHEMICAL PROCESSES

Abstract

Plant residues from the major agricultural crops (w heat, rice, corn, soybean, sugarcane, coffee and co tton) are abundantly available renewable resources that can b e used to supply energy through thermochemical conversion processes. The available amounts of plant residues from these crops and their physical properties (moi sture content, particle size, bulk density and porosity) wer e determined. The annual residues from the wheat, r ice, corn, soybean, sugarcane, coffee and cotton were 763.42, 698.10, 1729.92, 416.62, 16.85, 4.01 and 107.13 million tons, respectively. The total amount of plant residues wa s estimated at 3736.05 million tons with total ener gy content of 66.92 EJ. These residues can replace 2283.52 millio n tons of coal, 1551.78 million tons of oil and 184 7.63 million m 3 of natural gas. The moisture contents were 7.79, 6 .58, 6.40, 7.30, 8.15, 7.86 and 7.45% for the wheat straw, rice straw, corn stalk, soybean stalk, sugar cane stalk, coffee husk and cotton stalk, respectiv ely. The corn stalk and sugarcane stalk had a convex particle siz e distribution, the soybean stalk and cotton stalk had a concave particle size distribution, the wheat straw and ric e straw had an increasing trend particle size distr ibution and the coffee husk had a decreasing trend particle size di stribution. The average particle sizes for the whea t straw, rice straw, corn stalk, soybean stalk, sugarcane stalk, coffee husk and cotton stalk were 0.42, 0.40, 0.49, 0.43, 0.55, 0.67 and 0.38 mm, respectively. The average bulk density was 160.75, 166.29, 127.32, 242.34, 110.86, 3 49.06 and 230.55 kg m -3 for the wheat straw, rice straw, corn stalk, soybe an stalk, sugarcane stalk, coffee husk and cotton stalk, respectively. The average porosity was 5 1.25, 83.20, 58.51, 68.03, 77.58, 64.85 and 74.55% for the wheat straw, rice straw, corn stalk, soybean stalk, sugarcane stalk, coffee husk and cotton stalk, res pectively. The results obtained from this study indicate that diff erent plant residues have different physical proper ties.